WASHINGTON: An obvious decline in both daily deaths and infections in the United States continued on Tuesday as well, bringing relief to millions of Americans who have been locked down in their homes for more than a month now.

But the good news also ignited a turf war between US President Donald Trump and governors of some major US states unhappy with his plans to end the lockdown as soon as possible.

“The president of the United States has the authority to do what the president has the authority to do, which is very powerful,” Mr. Trump said. “The president of the United States calls the shots. That authority is total.”

On Monday evening, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that six north-east states would work together on determining when to reopen the economy. The governors of California, Oregon and Washington also announced a similar project for the west coast.

The governors said they would soon form a working group to make decisions on how and when stay-at-home orders can be relaxed without jeopardizing public health.

Later, New York governor Andrew Cuomo rejected President Trump’s claim that he had “total authority” to decide how and when to reopen businesses across the country.

“We don’t have King Trump, we have President Trump,” Mr. Cuomo said Tuesday in a CNN interview . “I have 10,000 deaths in my state. This virus did not kill Democrats or Republicans, it killed Americans,” he said, urging the president not to use the pandemic for party politics.

Mr Trump responded immediately, posting a message on his Twitter page.

“Cuomo’s been calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state’s responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc.,” he wrote. “I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!”

Legal experts who spoke to various US media outlets said while the president could issue federal regulations to prevent the spread of diseases, he did not have the authority to reverse a public health restriction put in place at the state or local level.

Mr Trump disagreed, saying that the US Constitution give him absolute power to regulate economic activities and the governors “can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.”

Governor Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, however, rejected Mr Trump’s interpretation. “Well, seeing as we had the responsibility for closing the state down,” he said, “I think we probably have the primary responsibility for opening it up.”

As the turf war continued, data released by various monitoring agencies showed a continuous daily decline of the respiratory disease that has killed about 24,000 people across the United States and infected almost 600,000.

By Tuesday afternoon, 3,500 new coronavirus cases and a thousand deaths were added to the list. On Monday, the monitors reported 26,641 new cases and 1,535 new deaths, compared to Sunday’s 27,421 cases.

On Saturday, the virus added 30,003 to the patients’ list and 1,830 to the death toll. But Friday was the worst, with 33,752 additional cases and 2,035 deaths.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2020