Trump says he disagrees with Fauci on COVID-19 in US

US President Donald Trump says he disagrees with his top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on his assessment of the dire situation the United States faces.

His remarks on Tuesday came as the US, the country hardest hit by the coronavirus, posted 60,209 new cases on the same day, a record for a 24-hour period, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.

The Baltimore-based university said in its latest data as of 8:30 p.m. local time (00:30 GMT Wednesday) that 2,991,351 were affected and 131,362 died, including 1,114 additional deaths counted.

On Monday, Fauci, an immunologist, said, “The current state is really not good.”

“We are still knee deep in the first wave” of COVID-19 infections, Fauci, Head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a Facebook and Twitter livestream.

Trump, however, said in a TV interview that “I disagree with him,” adding, “I think we are in a good place.”

“Dr. Fauci said don’t wear masks, now he says wear them,” Trump said on the “Full Court Press” news show.

Despite the spike in the cases, he said, “So we’ve done a good job. I think we are going to be in two, three, four weeks, by the time we next speak, I think we are going to be in very good shape.”

Meanwhile, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Dr. Christopher Murray, said in a statement that “the US didn’t experience a true end of the first wave of the pandemic.”

“This will not spare us from a second surge in the fall, which will hit particularly hard in states currently seeing high levels of infections.”

There is an ongoing surge of infections in the south and the west after regional officials began to ease restrictions.

Texas and California, the two largest US states, saw the biggest jumps with over 10,000 each on Tuesday.