President Donald Trump is changing his coronavirus death toll prediction, slowly creeping toward the 100,000 mark.
During his virtual town hall meeting on Fox News Sunday night, he acknowledged that the death toll is gradually getting closer to the 70,000 mark — a milestone he previously said would be the coronavirus peak. However, he now sees that it will likely be higher.
The president started by praising Americans for “successful” social distancing practices despite the rising death toll.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re successful, if you call losing 80 or 90,000 people successful. But its one of the reasons we’re not at that high end of the plane as opposed to the low end of the plane,” Trump said.
See Trump’s remarks below:
Then, he went on to admit that the death toll is “rapidly” going up.
“It’s going up, I know. It’s going up,” he said. “I used to say 65,000 and now I’m saying 80 or 90 and it goes up and it goes up rapidly.”
He also offered a new death toll projection, saying, “Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person out of this.”
Despite Trump’s previous death toll projections, Dr. Deborah Birx noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) projections have always said that 100,000 to 240,000 lives would be lost even with full mitigation.
“Our projections have always been between 100,000 and 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 on Sunday.
Trump’s increased death toll projection comes just two days after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the United States’ deadliest day during the pandemic.
On May 1, the WHO announced 2,909 people in America died of the coronavirus in just 24 hours. The record-high day comes as many states are beginning to partially reopen.
As of Monday morning, there are more than 1.1 million positive coronavirus cases in the United States. The death toll is now over 68,600 in the country.