In an interview with Scott Pelley for 60 Minutes on Sunday, President Joe Biden declared that the Covid pandemic is “over.”
Biden and Pelley were walking through Huntington Place, the site of this year’s Detroit Auto Show, when the president was asked if the pandemic is over. “The pandemic is over,” Biden responded. “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it …but the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”
According to two administration insiders who spoke to Politico, Biden’s prepared statements for his appearance on 60 Minutes did not include the statement that the pandemic is over.
He made his statement less than a week after Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, expressed optimism about the Covid pandemic’s situation but refrained from declaring that it was gone. “Last week, the number of weekly reported deaths from Covid-19 was the lowest since March 2020,” Ghebreyesus said, per CNN. “We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic. We’re not there yet, but the end is in sight.”
Over 13,600 people died in the United States this past month as a result of Covid, according to data gathered by Johns Hopkins.