Trump-Pence campaign rally to proceed amid surge of COVID-19 cases in Oklahoma

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• The re-election campaign rally of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence will push through on Saturday in Tulsa despite evidence that Oklahoma has not ‘flattened the curve’ and is in fact having a spike of new coronavirus cases recently.
• The campaign boasted of having over one million ticket requests for Saturday’s rally while the Bank of Oklahoma Center can only accommodate up to 19,000 people.
• The campaign required attendees to sign a waiver foregoing their rights to sue anyone from the organizers, including Trump, should they contract COVID-19 during the event.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are pushing through with the campaign rally on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, despite new data showed there is a surge of new coronavirus cases in the state.

Speaking at a White House roundtable discussion with Trump on Monday, Pence said, “Oklahoma has really been in the forefront of our efforts to slow the spread, and, in a very real sense, they flattened the curve, and today their hospital capacity is abundant. The number of cases in Oklahoma is declining precipitously, and we feel very confident going forward.”

The vice president’s comments were a reiteration of Trump’s remarks as he told the media last week that Oklahoma had “done a great job with COVID.”

However, data showed that Oklahoma has not yet flattened the curve since a relative drop in late May. On May 28, it recorded only 41 new coronavirus cases, the lowest figures it had since late March, but the number of positive tests has climbed up since then.

Last weekend, the state recorded over 222 new cases on Saturday and 225 on Sunday. On Monday, Oklahoma reported another 186 new cases.

Currently, a total of 234,586 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in the state. And the overall rate was lower than five percent, based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracking.

The Trump campaign boasts of receiving over one million ticket requests for Saturday’s rally, which is beyond the 19,000 seating capacity of the Bank of Oklahoma Center. An additional 40,000 attendees will be accommodated for a simulcast at the Tulsa convention center, Trump said on Monday. The venue, though, can only accommodate 8,900 people.

“We expect to have, you know, it’s like a record-setting crowd,” Trump said. “We’ve never had an empty seat and we certainly won’t in Oklahoma.”

While the campaign said that it would place precautionary measures at the venue, the CDC projects that around 35% of people carrying the disease are asymptomatic and likely unaware they could spread it. Last week, the World Health Organization said that the transmission rate of the virus through asymptomatic people was still not known.

Health experts claimed that the coronavirus is more contagious in indoor settings. Trump’s campaign rally required attendees to sign a waiver stating that the campaign won’t be liable should they acquire COVID-19.

Source: AOL.com