Trump: Number of coronavirus deaths could drop to 60K after minimum projections of 100K

The number of projected coronavirus deaths in the U.S. could be as few as 60,000, compared to an initial minimum projection of 100,000, President Trump said Friday.

"The minimum number was 100,000 lives, and I think we'll be substantially under that number," Trump said during the daily White House coronavirus task force briefing. "Hard to believe that if you had 60,000, you could never be happy, but that's a lot fewer than we were originally told and thinking. So they said between 100,000 and 220,000 lives on the minimum side, and up to 2.2 million lives if we didn't do anything.

Trump said his latest projections were the result of all Americans efforts to slow the spread of the virus.

"It just show(s) tremendous resolve by the people of this country. So we'll see what it ends up being, but it looks like we're headed to a number substantially below the 100,000. That would be the low mark, and I hope that bears out." 

Trump said the number of hospital beds being used by coronavirus patients are also on the downward curve.

"When you look at those numbers, the numbers of deaths, people that have died, it's so horrible," he said. "Now on the other side, you have the numbers of beds being used, we were just saying, are substantially reduced, it's usually a sign that it's heading in the downward curve." 

Trump said the states of New York and New Jersey and the cities of Detroit and New Orleans have started to stabilize in their hospitalization rates. 

"In the midst of all this grief and this pain, we're seeing these signs, and we're seeing them very strongly," he also said. "And a lot of of that has to do with the aggressive strategy in saving so many lives. We're saved so many lives compared to what it could have been. So, nobody knows what the number is, but we had a number of a hundred thousand lives, as many as that it is, it's impossible to even think of it. And that was the low end with a tremendous amount of work. We've kept our fatality rate very very low compared to other countries."

On March 31, the White House announced projected a minimum of 100,000 coronavirus fatalities.

"Our hope is to get that down as far as we possibly can," Dr. Tony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said on March 31. Fauci is also part of the White House coronavirus team. 

Fauci also said at the time that the number of deaths could be lower if Americans take stringent mitigation methods, including "social distancing." 

"We don't accept that number, that that's what it's going to be," he said. "I don't want it to be a mixed message. We want to do much much better than that." 

Fauci on Friday urged Americans to continue their "social distancing" to maintain a slowing of the spread of coronavirus.