US projecting 3K daily COVID-19 deaths by June: report

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - The Trump administration is predicting for a possible dramatic uptick in the number of daily coronavirus deaths that could reach 3,000 by June, according to a report published Monday.

An internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report obtained by the New York Times and posted in full on their website estimates a near doubling of the roughly 1,750 deaths recorded per day in the US.

The CDC modeling was compiled in presentation-form by the the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

It also sees an increase in the number of daily cases until it hits 200,000 per day by the end of May. That is an eight-fold increase from the number of daily cases currently detected.

“There remains a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow,” the Centers for Disease Control said.

The warning comes as many jurisdictions nationwide prepare to begin the gradual process of reopening, slowly removing stringent measures that have been imposed to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.

The CDC data appears to confirm concerns from public health officials that the reopening could very well set-back the hard-won gains the US has been seeing in the fight against the virus, according to the Times.

In response to the report, the White House said the document has not been presented to US President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, nor has it been subject to "interagency vetting."

"This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed," spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. "The President’s phased guidelines to open up America again are a scientific driven approach that the top health and infectious disease experts in the federal government agreed with."

The US remains the nation hardest-hit by the coronavirus pandemic with over 3.5 million cases worldwide and nearly 250,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.