People reach through the wall from the Mexican side at the conclusion of the Hugs Not Walls event on the US-Mexico border on October 13, 2018 in Sunland Park, N.M.

US President Donald Trump is praising his border wall before banning immigration into the United States on the pretext of tackling the coronavirus crisis.

Trump cited the wall and the Mexican soldiers he claims are protecting it, reiterating in a tweet on Wednesday that his executive order would ban immigration into the country.

I will be signing my Executive Order prohibiting immigration into our Country today, he said.

In the meantime, even without this order, our Southern Border, aided substantially by the 170 miles of new Border Wall & 27,000 Mexican soldiers, is very tight - including for human trafficking!

Trump initially made the announcement on Monday , which faced backlash from his Democratic nemeses.

It would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in from abroad, Trump told reporters on Tuesday. We must first take care of the American worker.

Covid-19 has so far claimed over 40,000 lives amid the Trump administration’s highly criticized response to the fast-growing pandemic.

The comment came amid reports that the first death in the United States took place earlier than thought.

The nation’s first two deaths from the virus happened on February 6 and February 17, the Santa Clara County, California, public health department confirmed in a statement on Tuesday.

It was previously thought that the first death was recorded on February 29 in Washington state.

Testing criteria set by the CDC at the time restricted testing to only individuals with a known travel history and who sought medical care for specific symptoms, it added. As the Medical Examiner-Coroner continues to carefully investigate deaths throughout the county, we anticipate additional deaths from Covid-19 will be identified.

Dr. Jeffrey Smith, who serves as county executive for Santa Clara County, said the first case had been mistaken with flu, which was quite common at the time.

This wasn’t recognized because we were having a severe flu season, Smith said. Symptoms are very much like the flu. If you got a mild case of covid, you didn’t really notice... You didn’t even go to the doctor. The doctor maybe didn’t even do it because they presumed it was the flu.

SOURCE: PRESS TV