Ledger · First term · № 131
'Within a couple of days' 15 COVID cases would be 'close to zero'
Never delivered“And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done.”
- Promised
- , White House press conference with the Coronavirus Task Force
- Stated deadline
- “within a couple of days” → February 28, 2020
- Overdue by
- 6 years, 6 months as of September 22, 2026
- Topic
- COVID-19
- Era
- First term
What happened
Cases did not fall to zero. The first US community-transmission case was confirmed the same day and the first reported US death came on February 29, 2020. By late March the US had the most confirmed cases in the world, and by the first anniversary of the remark the American death toll had passed 500,000.