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The United States is ending confinement even as coronavirus deaths continue to rise in the country. On Sunday, President Donald Trump declared on Fox News that "we are going to lose between 75,000, 80,000, 100,000 people." Exactly thirteen days earlier, on April 20, Trump had predicted "50,000 or 60,000" deaths. This Monday, in the late afternoon in Spain, deaths from Covid-19 amount to between 68,046 and 69,064, with a total of 1,166,000 infected.

But the Trump government itself is handling much higher figures than those recognized by the president. One of the president's scientific advisers, Deborah Birx, said Sunday that "our estimates have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 dead, and that with mitigation measures . " In fact, Birx has stretched and shrunk the numbers as he has wished, and celebrated on television "the knowledge of the scientific literature" of Trump.

It is a position that the doctor seems to have abandoned since the president declared that it was Birx who explained the effectiveness of "using a very powerful light" or taking disinfectant to fight the coronavirus. In the two weeks since Trump announced those novel therapies for Covid-19, several hundred people have been assisted in the emergency departments of US hospitals for swallowing bleach or other chemicals.

Beyond the forecasts, there is an incontrovertible fact: in the United States, the 'curve' does not flatten . Since March 31, the number of new cases has only fallen below the 70,000 barrier a single day. And, as the disease spreads from large cities to rural areas, the death toll remains stable, at around 2,000 people a day . However, since the pandemic is slowly fading in New York, its media impact is far less.

But even if they don't appear on television, the dead are still there. What's more, their number can increase dramatically. A report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which could be considered the equivalent of Civil Protection in Spain, predicts 3,000 deaths and 200,000 daily 'positives' by June 1 . If that prediction comes true, the 'peak' in the United States is still a long way off, and that country will end up with similar, if not even higher, death rates relative to its population than Belgium, Spain and Italy, the three countries. of the world that lead that sinister ranking. Because, for the moment, when the population of that country is taken into account, those killed by coronaviruses are only a third of those in Spain .

In any case, it is very difficult to know precisely the number of deaths or even those infected in the United States. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has decided to limit the information given by the state - the third most populous in the US, and the first in number of retirees residing there - on new infections in order to reopen the economy.

Added to that is the lack of tests. On March 14, Trump promised at the White House more than five million tests in two weeks. Seven weeks have passed, and the US has barely done 7.3 million tests. Many of the states that are reopening their economic activity have barely tested 1% or 2% of their population .

Amid problems in containing the pandemic, the Donald Trump government has decided to redirect its strategy and blame China for hiding the scope of the pandemic, or even for causing it . In his Sunday interview, Trump claimed that the virus spread due to an "error" in China that the Chinese government then "tried to cover up." According to the US president, his team is preparing a report on the matter that will be "very conclusive."

More direct was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who a few hours earlier had stated that "there is enormous evidence" that the coronavirus had originated in a laboratory in Wuhan City, where the pandemic began. The scientific community has unanimously rejected that the coronavirus could have been 'manufactured' in a laboratory . Pompeo said China "has a history of infecting the world," although he did not explain what that claim is based on.

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