Trump aide: 'We will not shut the economy down'

One of president Donald Trump's top ecomic visers, Larry Kudlow, said that even though number of new coronavirus cases is approaching its all-time high, re are plans to shut down ecomy.

" fatality rate continues to fall. We don't see any upturn in fatality rate," said Kudlow, director of National Ecomic Council.

"We're going to have hot spots. question. We have m w in you kw, Texas and parts of south, Carolinas, Arizona, we just have to live with that," he said.

Texas has emerged as one of nation's biggest coronavirus hotspots, reporting more than 11,000 new cases in past two days alone.

Arizona reported 3,056 ditional COVID-19 cases on Thursday, fourth day in a week in which state h daily increases of over 3,000 cases.

U.S. has greatly ramped up testing in past few months, and it is w presumably finding many less-serious cases that would have gone undetected earlier in outbreak, when availability of testing was limited and sicker people were often given priority.

number of workers applying for unemployment benefits last week declined slightly to 1.48 million, indicating layoffs are slowing but are still painfully high.

virus has been blamed for over 120,000 U.S. deaths — highest toll in world — and more than 2.3 million confirmed infections nationwide. On Wednesday, widely cited University of Washington computer model of outbreak projected nearly 180,000 U.S. deaths by Oct. 1.