Despite the corona pandemic, US President Trump wanted to accept his renewed nomination as Republican presidential candidate at a major event – in Florida, one of the current epicentres of the crisis. Now the concerns were obviously getting too great.
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Because of the “flare-up” of the corona pandemic in the US state of Florida, President Donald Trump canceled the Republican party convention planned for the end of August. “The time for the event is not right,” said Trump on Thursday (local time) in the White House. “I have to protect the American people.” There is nothing more important than the safety of Americans. The formal nomination of Trump as a candidate for the presidential election on November 3rd is now to take place on a smaller scale in Charlotte, North Carolina. The framework in which he will give his nomination speech has not yet been decided.
With the cancellation of the major event planned in Florida, Trump turned around. Only in June did he announce the relocation of parts of the party congress originally planned in Charlotte with around 19,000 delegates. North Carolina’s Governor Roy Cooper had declared because of the corona pandemic that such a major event would only be possible under conditions such as wearing masks and fewer participants.
“We had a huge thing planned,” said Trump on Thursday. He does not want to find himself in the situation in which he is accused of doing something unsafe. Rather, he wants to be a “role model”.
Critics accuse the president of the opposite. Early on in the pandemic, Trump urged the economy to reopen and a quick return to normal operations. In June he held an election campaign meeting in front of several thousand supporters in a closed hall after a break of several months against the advice of experts.
The party leader of the Republicans, Ronna McDaniel, had said on Monday that the president would speak to delegates at the party conference. It is possible to reconcile health and the reopening of the economy – and that will be proven at the party congress.
However, the corona situation in Florida has worsened significantly since mid-June. In the state with a good 21 million inhabitants there are now around 400,000 known infections with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen. Jacksonville is one of the hardest hit areas.
In the USA, each of the 50 states decides separately which corona requirements apply at what time and when it is time for easing. However, fully attended major events have so far been taboo almost everywhere.
The Democrats will also hold their party conference planned for August for the nomination of their presidential candidate mostly virtually. Ex-Vice President Joe Biden should accept the nomination as a candidate at the original venue in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it said. However, the delegates should not travel due to the corona pandemic.
The USA passed another dramatic milestone in the corona pandemic. In the meantime, more than four million infections with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen have been detected in the country with around 330 million inhabitants. More than 144,000 people died after infection, according to data from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on Thursday. In no other country in the world are so many infections known.
The US health authority CDC assumes that there is a high number of unreported infections in many regions of the country. More than 15 million corona infections have been recorded worldwide. Around 626,000 people died in connection with Covid-19.
In the USA, the pandemic has recently worsened dramatically. The authorities reported between 60,000 and 77,000 new infections per day in the past two weeks. More than 1,000 deaths were recorded within 24 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. (dpa)
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