Donald Trump says churches should be reopened by Easter Sunday, faces backlash

The Christian leaders in the United States have criticised US President Donald Trump for saying he wants most places reopened and churches full by Easter Sunday. While the country is struggling to combat the consequences of lockdowns and US economy is facing downfall with the high unemployment rate, the US President is seen eager to jumpstart the businesses and get the country back on track. As of March 26, US has reported at least 68,573 cases of COVID-19 and 1,036 fatalities and on March 25, but Trump expressed his wish to see “large sections of the country” reopened by April 12.

As per reports, the US President’s comments came despite the warnings from the White House coronavirus task force members, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, with the latter saying that she was “deeply concerned” about New York and its surrounding area. Moreover, the recent comments made by the US President were called “heights of hypocrisy” by pastor and activist, the Rev William J Barber II. Rev Al Sharpton reportedly said that if Trump was going to use biblical language, he “needs to know the whole easter story”. According to reports, Rev Laura Everett, a pastor and executive director of Massachusetts Council of Churches tweeted about her anger after Trump’s comments. 

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US can be ‘new epicentre’ of COVID-19

While Trump is urging that the country should be functional within few weeks, the World Health Organisation has said on March 25 that the United States has the potential to become the new epicentre of the deadly coronavirus outbreak due to a “very large acceleration in infections” in the country. While life in China, where the COVID-19 had originated in December 2019 is slowly coming back to normalcy, the fatal COVID-19 has spread to over 198 countries.

The crisis due to the pandemic has prompted more governors to join states ordering all citizens to stay at home and practice social distancing. WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris has told the reporters that over the past 24 hours, 85 per cent of the new cases worldwide were from Europe and the US and out of those, at least 40 per cent were just from the US. However, the WHO spokesperson also lauded the improvements made in the country with more intensified testing among other efforts to isolate the sick and trace their immediate contacts exposed to the fatal COVID-19.

When she was further asked if the US can become the new epicentre, Harris replied that the United Nations health agency is now “seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the US. So it does have that potential. We cannot say that is the case yet but it does have that potential”.

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