(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said the first U.S. patient to die from the coronavirus was a “medically high-risk patient in her late 50s,” and said additional cases are likely.

Trump spoke Saturday at a White House press conference he’d announced by tweet less then two hours beforehand. The president for days has talked down the risk of the virus amid a market selloff and rapidly rising global cases. In Italy, for example, confirmed cases tolled 1,100 on Saturday.

Some 22 patients in the U.S. have coronavirus and additional cases are likely, Trump said, shortly before he was due to leave for a campaign-style speech at a convention of conservatives near Washington.

Healthy individuals in the U.S. should be able to full recover, he said. At present, four are “very ill” in addition to the one fatality. Trump said he’d meet with pharmaceutical executives at the White House on Monday about a vaccine.

At the start of the week, Trump and his top economic adviser Larry Kudlow encouraged stock market investors to buy the dip -- but markets kept plunging. The benchmark S&P 500 index dropped 11% for the week, its most since October 2008, to hit a five-month low.

Trump’s public statements have been at odds with that of U.S. health officials, who’ve issued a series of warnings. Trump has blamed media for, in his view, over-stoking fears of the virus, and Democrats.

“This is their new hoax,” he said of the Democratic Party at a rally in South Carolina on Friday night.

That has raised concerns that the Trump administration is unable to pivot from partisan fights like the recently-concluded impeachment investigation to provide reassurance to Americans as a whole.

Read more rolling coverage of coronavirus.

Trump said on Friday he was considering expanded travel restrictions for a few countries, beyond those imposed a month ago on China. Italy’s confirmed coronavirus infections topped 1,000 on Saturday, while China’s Xi Jinping scrapped a rare trip to Japan.

In the U.S., the administration has loosened rules to accelerate testing, while the U.S. surgeon general asked people to stop buying masks. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has said the U.S. may need to buy millions of masks and pieces of personal protective equipment.

Azar said Friday he’s willing to use the Defense Production Act to fast-track manufacturing as needed; as of Friday, he said that wasn’t yet necessary.

--With assistance from Mario Parker.

To contact the reporter on this story: Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny

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