The United States is expected to see about 200,000 new COVID-19 cases per day by June 1, with daily deaths hitting 3,000, a leaked Trump administration document shows.
"As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths over the next several weeks. The daily death toll will reach about 3,000 on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double the current number of about 1,750," the Times reported today. "The projections, based on government modeling pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases a day currently."
The Times published the document, which is titled "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Situation Update." These charts show the projections of new daily cases and deaths as well as how confirmed cases and deaths have risen since the pandemic began:
Coronavirus projections from a leaked US government document. New York Times Coronavirus projections from a leaked US government document. New York Times Coronavirus data from a leaked US government document. New York Times
It isn't clear whether the document's projections assume that states will keep enforcing stay-at-home orders through May. The US so far has nearly 1.2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and about 62,000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
The leaked Trump administration document said there are "a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow or are in an elevated incidence plateau, including in the Great Lakes region, parts of the Southeast, Northeast, and around southern California." Good news from the document is that "incidence rates continue to decrease in multiple counties, including hard hit areas in Louisiana and in the New York City region" and that "incidence rates have recently plateaued in areas around Chicago."
Despite the projected increase in daily cases and deaths, a White House spokesperson told the NYT that "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 White House also said the leaked document hasn't been vetted. "This is not a White House document nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting," a White House spokesperson said. "This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data thaRead More – Source
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