Trump and Biden have contradictory views on the president's handling of the pandemic with Trump asserting he's done better than any other world leader and Biden claiming he's done "virtually nothing."

Trump's insisted again that the pandemic is "going away," touting his administration's efforts on therapeutics and vaccines.

"I don't think we're gonna have a dark winter at all," Trump said. "I say we're learning to live with it. We have no choice. We can't lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does," drawing a laugh from Biden.

Biden emphasized the lives already lost, making a direct appeal to those at home.

"Number one, he says that we're, you know, we're learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it," Biden said. "You folks home who have an empty chair at the kitchen table this morning, that man or wife going to bed tonight and reaching over to try to touch their -- out of habit where their wife or husband was is gone. Learning to live with it? Come on."

When Trump threatened that Biden would shutdown the country if elected, causing massive economic depression, Biden said, "I'm going to shut down the virus, not the country."

In response to a question on how he would lead the country out of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden cited the more than 220,000 Americans who had died from the virus.

"Anyone who's responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America," he said.

Biden went on to say that Trump doesn't have a plan for dealing with the virus. He called for mask wearing, and a national policy on mask wearing, more testing and a national policy on reopening schools and businesses.

"I will take care of this. I will end this," Biden said to close out his first answer. "I will make sure we have a plan."

Trump tackled the first question on the coronavirus pandemic but stuck to his stance the pandemic is "rounding the corner" and "going away."

"Since the two of you last shared a stage, 16,000 Americans have died from COVID," Welker said. "So please be specific, how would you lead the country during this next stage of the coronavirus crisis?"

"As you know, 2.2 million people modelled out were expected to die," Trump began. "We closed up the greatest economy in the world in order to fight this horrible disease that came from China."

He went on to draw from his personal experience contracting COVID-19, downplaying its side effects and touting the country's therapeutics.

"I can tell you from personal experience that I was in the hospital. I had it. And I got better," Trump said. "And I will tell you that I had something that they gave me, a therapeutic, I guess they would call it, some people could say it was a cure. But I was in for a short period of time and I got better very fast or I wouldn't be here tonight. And now they say I'm immune. Whether it's four months or a lifetime, nobody has been able to say that, but I'm immune."

"It will go away and as I say, we're rounding the turn. We're rounding the corner. It's going away," he added.

The final presidential debate has kicked off from Belmont University in Nashville marking Trump and Biden's final chance to pitch themselves to voters in primetime ahead of Nov. 3. The audience of roughly 200 people in stadium-style seating applauded as the candidates took the stage.

There was a last-minute change to remove the plexiglass partitions placed between the two candidates after Dr. Anthony Fauci weighed in and each tested negative for COVID-19. They remain socially distanced with at least 12 feet of space between them.

The first question from moderator Kristen Welker, NBC News White House correspondent, was on COVID-19 and went to the president.

Biden's mic will be muted while the president answers, and Trump's mic will follow suit when it's the former vice president's turn to weigh in.

"On behalf of the voters, I'm going to ask you to please speak one at a time. The goal is for you to hear each other and for the American people to hear every word of what you both have to say," Welker said.

TRUMP'S CLAIM: "Frankly, (Biden) ran the H1N1, swine flu, and it was a total disaster, far less lethal, but it was a total disaster. Had that had this kind of numbers, 700,000 people would be dead right now."

FACT CHECK: While Trump is correct that the H1N1 virus was much less lethal than COVID-19, it is misleading to call the Obama administration's response a "failure."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates up to 575,000 lives were lost to the swine flu worldwide. Of those, fewer than 13,000 were American, due in part to the Obama administration's "complex, multi-faceted and long-term response," the CDC later wrote. Thus far, COVID-19 has taken the lives of over 210,000 Americans, a little over eight months since the first known case of the virus was discovered in the United States.

"The team, in my opinion, in 2009, really demonstrated that the planning was worth it. Nothing is ever perfect. But I felt just so impressed and so proud of the job CDC did in 2009," Dr. Julie Gerberding, a CDC director during the George W. Bush administration, told ABC News.

-ABC News' John Verhovek