One of President Donald Trump’s top medical advisers slashed projections for U.S. coronavirus deaths on Thursday, saying that only about 60,000 people may die — almost half as many as the White House estimated a week ago.
The falling projection, the result of aggressive social distancing behaviors Americans adopted to curb the spread of the virus, may accelerate Trump’s effort to develop a plan to urge Americans to leave their homes and return to work next month.
“The real data are telling us it is highly likely we are having a definite positive effect by the mitigation things that we’re doing, this physical separation,” Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC in an interview.
“I believe we are going to see a downturn in that, and it looks more like the 60,000, than the 100,000 to 200,000” projected fatalities, he said. “But having said that, we better be careful that we don’t say: ‘OK, we’re doing so well we could pull back.’”
Birx Projections
Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House’s coronavirus task force, projected March 31 that as many as 240,000 Americans could die as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, even with another 30 days of stringent public health restrictions.
That analysis caused Trump to retreat from ambitions to urge Americans back to work by Easter. But as the outbreak has appeared to plateau in New York, the U.S. epicenter, Trump’s aides have begun initial planning to urge a re-opening in May.