Washington (AFP)
President Donald Trump's administration plans to almost double the daily death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic by June 1, according to an internal document reported Monday by two American newspapers.
The report predicts more than 3,000 deaths and 200,000 new cases registered per day on this date, against between 1,500 and 2,000 deaths and of the order of 25,000 to 30,000 new cases registered each of these last days, according to the New York Times and Washington Post.
The White House did not dispute the authenticity of the report, described as an "internal document of the CDC" (Centers for Disease Prevention and Control), but argued that "these data did not reflect any modeling of the working group" executive on coronavirus, according to spokesperson Judd Deere.
"The President's gradual directives to reopen America are guided by a scientific approach supported by the top federal health and infectious disease experts," he added.
The report predicts a rapid restart of the epidemic in mid-May, which would confirm the warnings of many experts who believe that the ongoing lifting of containment measures in some states is premature.
Containment was gradually put in place from mid-March in the United States, in a scattered order according to the States.
The measures halted the rising phase of the pandemic in the country, but the epidemic remained on a "plateau" throughout the month of April. Larger initial outbreaks, such as New York, are seeing the number of their new daily cases decline, but other parts of the country, particularly in rural and southern areas, have taken over, even as they have started to reopen their non-essential businesses, like Texas.
© 2020 AFP