Trump predicts coronavirus death toll in the US could reach 100,000

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• During a town hall event with Fox News on Sunday, President Donald Trump said that death toll projection in the country could go as high as 100,000 — about 70% higher than his prior estimate of 60,000.
• Trump said that the administration’s efforts were a success, pointing out that if they haven’t intervened, over 1.1 million Americans would have died.
• Dr. Deborah Birx, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, said on Sunday that the projection has always been between 100-240,000 fatalities considering full mitigation efforts have been observed.

President Donald Trump said during a town hall event with Fox News on Sunday that eventual fatalities in the country could go as high as 100,000 — a figure that’s higher than his prediction of about 60,000 last month.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people… That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this,” Trump said during the event, though he did recognize he previously gave a lower number.

“I used to say 65,000 and now I’m saying 80 or 90, and it goes up and it goes up rapidly,’ Trump said. “But it’s still going to be, no matter how you look at it, at the very lower end of the plane.”

The president then pointed out that if his administration did not manage the outbreak, the projected cases of COVID-19 could have reached up to 1.1 million.

“If we didn’t do it, the minimum we would have lost was a million two, a million four, a million five, that’s the minimum. We would have lost probably higher, it’s possible higher than 2.2,” Trump said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re successful, if you call losing 80 or 90,000 people successful.”

 “In terms of death … we’re at the lower level, the lowest level predicted. And we might not even hit that. It might be lower. And … sadly that’s all we can do,” he added.

Trump praised his efforts on imposing travel ban against China during the pandemic’s early stage, but never accepted the criticisms thrown at his administration

Currently, there are more than 67,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States. Infected cases continue to spread across states, yet the White House has been pushing for some states to immediately restart their economies.

Dr. Deborah Birx, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, said on Sunday that the administration had always been warned that fatalities could spike to more than 100,000 as cases continued to spread rapidly across the country.

“Our projections have always been between 100-240,000 American lives lost and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other of how to social distance,” she told Fox News Sunday.

Medical experts also cautioned the country against reopening the states too soon.

Source: AOL.com