President Donald Trump is projecting that coronavirus deaths in the United States could reach 70,000, but says original projections were much higher as he explained why voters should consider re-electing him in November.
Trump has at times this month cited 60,000 as the estimate of how many people would die from COVID-19.
Trump was asked during a White House news conference on Monday whether an American president deserved to be re-elected after losing more Americans in six weeks than died in the Vietnam War. Approximately 58,000 U.S. troops were killed during the Vietnam War.
The number of dead in the U.S. from COVID-19 surpassed 55,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Trump said the nation has lost a lot of people.
But if you look at what original projections were 2.2 million we’re probably heading to 60,000-70,000. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this. And I think we’ve made a lot of really good decisions. The big decision was closing the border or doing the ban, people coming in from China.”
Trump added: I think we’ve done a great job. I will say this, one person is too many. Trump is relying on a pandemic forecast that predicted 1.5 million to 2.2 million deaths in the United States in a worst-case scenario, without efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus through social distancing.
coronavirus in New York on Monday, state Governor Andrew Cuomo has said, the lowest number of fatalities in almost a month in America’s COVID-19 epicenter.
New Jersey Governor Philip Murphy reported 106 deaths on Monday, and according to a report in The New York Times, the one-day death tolls were less than half of what the two states reported at their peaks.
As the states showed progress in fighting the deadly contagion, Cuomo and Murphy have begun to offer details on reopening in the months ahead.
Cuomo has said that after May 15, when his order shutting down New York is set to expire, businesses in what he called low-risk industries like construction and manufacturing might begin to reopen in parts of the state that have been less affected, the NYT reported.
However, the shutdown order will be extended beyond May 15 in many parts of New York.
In a radio interview, Cuomo said that he hoped to decide this week whether New York schools would reopen before the end of the school year.
He said that he would coordinate with Murphy and Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut on the decision, as well as on whether summer schools would be held in the three states.
Murphy said that coordination between New York and New Jersey would probably be closest in the extended New York City metropolitan area, where the virus has hit with particular force.
Elsewhere, he said, I don’t think you’ll see us taking in each case identical steps, but I think you’ll see our steps harmonized.
Murphy further said that before he would consider reopening businesses and schools, he would need to see a prolonged decline in hospitalization and infection rates, expanded testing and contact tracing, and more places where virus patients can recover in isolation, the NYT report said.
In a hopeful note, he said schools might reopen before the end of June.
The deadly coronavirus, which originated in China late last year, has so far killed more than two lakh people and infected over three million globally. The largest number of them are in the US: more than 56,000 deaths and over one million infections.
According to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the US economy, the world’s largest, is in a recession due to the pandemic.
US President Donald Trump has expressed confidence over an economic rebound, saying this year’s fourth quarter and the next year would be “phenomenal” in terms of growth as several states have started taking steps to reopen businesses, which were abruptly shut down due to the contagion.
