Roughly 1,750 Americans are dying every day from COVID-19. But new federal estimates project that figure will nearly double over the next month, reports the New York Times. The projections from the CDC and FEMA see the US hitting about 3,000 deaths per day on June 1. The forecast also sees 200,000 newly diagnosed cases a day by that date, up from 25,000 a day now. The Times published the internal document here. On Sunday, President Trump increased his own estimate for the US death toll to 100,000, but the Times notes that figure will be surpassed in short order if these projections are correct. The US currently has about 68,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The new projections illustrate the risk of relaxing restrictions around the country, per the Hill. "There remains a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow," warns the CDC in the report. After the Times published the information, the White House cautioned against reading too much into it. "This is not a White House document nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting," said spokesman Judd Deere. "This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed." On Sunday, task force member Dr. Deborah Birx reiterated that White House projections on deaths remained between 100,000 and 240,000, "and that's with full mitigation." (More coronavirus stories.)
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