President Trump has donated his fourth-quarter salary to help the coronavirus crisis.
The news was revealed by the White House Press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham. She posted a picture of the quarterly $100,000 cheque on Twitter from Trump to the Health and Human Services Secretary, Alex Azar.
This Wuhan medic broke down because of the stress of the epidemic:
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At a briefing at the White House, Azar said: "I'm also very pleased to announce that the president of the United States has donated his quarterly check to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health at HHS to fund the coronavirus preparedness and response activity. So it's very nice to see that check."
Trump has continually donated his quarterly salary since taking office in November 2016 - an action that he claims has been ignored by the media.
"President @realDonaldTrump made a commitment to donate his salary while in office. Honoring that promise and to further protect the American people, he is donating his 2019 Q4 salary to @HHSGov to support the efforts being undertaken to confront, contain, and combat #Coronavirus," Grisham tweeted Tuesday.
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The news of the donation comes as nine people in the US have died from the virus, with a total of 128 confirmed cases. Of these cases, 110 people are still infected and nine have recovered. Eight are in a critical condition, per WorldOMeter.
All of the US deaths so far have taken place in Washington State, the Daily Mail reports.
President Trump is currently in the process of mobilizing the US's response to the virus, which now exists on every continent on the Earth apart from Antarctica.
In China, a 1,000-bed hospital was built for the infected in just five days:
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The president visited the National Institute of Health on Tuesday afternoon. Later that day, he met with Azar and the country's top immunologist Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, at the White House.
This week, the president will also visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
At the time of writing, per the WHO live dashboard, there have been a confirmed 93,094 cases of coronavirus and 3,219 deaths across 77 countries.