US President Donald Trump has confirmed the White House coronavirus task force will be winding down, with Vice-President Mike Pence suggesting it could be disbanded within weeks.
“We are bringing our country back,” Mr. Trump said during a visit to a mask-manufacturing factory in Arizona.
New confirmed infections per day in the US currently top 20,000, and daily deaths exceed 1,000.
US health officials warn the virus may spread as businesses begin to reopen.
The US currently has 1.2 million confirmed coronavirus infections and more than 70,000 related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, which is tracking the pandemic.
During a visit to the plant in Phoenix after weeks holed up at the White House, Mr. Trump told journalists: “Mike Pence and the task force have done a great job, but we’re now looking at a little bit of a different form, and that form is safety and opening. And we’ll have a different group probably set up for that.”
The president – who wore safety goggles but no face mask during his tour of the facility – was asked if it was “mission accomplished”, and he said: “No, not at all. The mission accomplished is when it’s over.”
Critics have accused the president of sacrificing Americans’ public health in his eagerness to reopen the US economy ahead of his re-election battle in November.
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In Arizona on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said that Democrats were hoping his coronavirus policy would fail “so they can win the election”.
Acknowledging a human cost to the plans, Mr. Trump told reporters: “I’m not saying anything is perfect, and yes, will some people be affected? Yes.
“Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.”
However, it will be up to individual states to determine how they reopen.
Some Democratic governors in badly hit states have been cautious, calling for more testing and other safeguards before easing lockdowns. Other states, many led by Republicans in the south and mid-west, have already begun lifting restrictions.
The president was also asked on Tuesday if White House task force experts Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci would still be involved in efforts to address the coronavirus.
“They will be and so will other doctors and so will other experts in the field,” the president answered.
The once daily task force briefings have become increasingly scarce since Mr. Trump was widely condemned by the medical community last month after he pondered at the podium whether injecting bleach into people might kill the virus.
Pence earlier on Tuesday told reporters in a briefing that the task force could soon be disbanded.
He said the Trump administration was “starting to look at the Memorial Day [late May] window, early June window as a time when we could begin to transition back to having our agencies begin to manage our national response in a more traditional manner”.
He said it was “a reflection of the tremendous progress we’ve made as a country”.
Mr. Pence has led the task force, which reports to the president and co-ordinates with medical institutes, political staff and state governors. The group also consulted medical experts to formulate national guidelines on social distancing.
