Trump lashes out at Democrats over coronavirus criticism: 'This is their new hoax'

US President Donald Trump has lashed out at the American news media and Democrats, saying they are unfairly criticizing his response to the coronavirus, which has killed about 3,000 people worldwide. "This is their new hoax," he said.

There have been more than 83,000 global cases with infections in dozens of other countries, raising fears of a pandemic. American billionaire Bill Gates has said the coronavirus is starting to behave like the “once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about,” and referred to the outbreak as a pandemic.

According to US health officials, there are now at least four coronavirus cases in the US without any related travel history. The officials are worried about the coronavirus spreading through West Coast communities. As of early Saturday, there were at least 67 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the US.

US Democratic presidential candidates have attacked Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, accusing him of playing politics with the disease.

In response Trump, speaking at a campaign rally in North Charleston in South Carolina, discussed the measures his administration has taken to contain the virus, and said, "The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus.”

"One of my people came up to me and said, 'Mr. President they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn't work out too well," Trump said. "They tried the impeachment hoax."

"This is their new hoax," he said, probably referring to Democrats' criticism of the government’s coronavirus response.

Trump also accused the press of being "in hysteria mode" in its coverage of the virus.

"We have to take it very, very seriously," he said. "We are preparing for the worst."

He assured the crowd that he was taking the matter seriously and was prepared to adapt if necessary.

"Two weeks ago, who would’ve thought this could be going on" Trump said. "But things happen in life, and you have to be prepared and you have to be flexible."

Meanwhile, Microsoft co-founder Gates, who has warned for years that the world is not ready for a deadly pandemic, wrote in an op-ed for the New England Journal of Medicine on Friday that COVID-19 poses a serious threat to the world because it’s far more deadly and contagious than many other deadly viruses.

"In the past week, COVID-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we've been worried about," Gates wrote. "I hope it's not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise."

He said COVID-19′s current predicted fatality rate is higher than that of the 1957 influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 66,000 people in the United States.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charitable foundation that he and his wife, Melinda Gates, established in 2000, recently committed $100 million to fighting the coronavirus.

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