Fauci Slashes U.S. Death Projection, Raising Hope for Reopening

One of President Donald Trump’s top medical advisers slashed projections for U.S. coronavirus deaths on Thursday, saying that about 60,000 people may die -- almost half as many as the White House estimated a week ago.

The falling projection, the result of aggressive social distancing behaviors Americans adopted to curb the spread of the virus, may accelerate Trump’s effort to develop a plan to urge Americans to leave their homes and return to work next month.

Anthony Fauci

Photographer: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg

“The real data are telling us it is highly likely we are having a definite positive effect by the mitigation things that we’re doing, this physical separation,” Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC in an interview.

“I believe we are going to see a downturn in that, and it looks more like the 60,000, than the 100,000 to 200,000” projected fatalities, he said. “But having said that, we better be careful that we don’t say: ‘OK, we’re doing so well we could pull back.’”

Birx Projections

Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House’s coronavirus task force, projected March 31 that as many as 240,000 Americans could die as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, even with another 30 days of stringent public health restrictions.

That analysis caused Trump to retreat from ambitions to urge Americans back to work by Easter. But as the outbreak has appeared to plateau in New York, the U.S. epicenter, Trump’s aides have begun initial planning to urge a re-opening in May.

Deborah Birx

Photographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg

At a White House news conference on Wednesday, Birx said that two prominent models for U.S. mortality from the Covid-19 pandemic -- Covid Act Now and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington -- had both lowered their fatality projections based on widespread social distancing efforts.

Trump didn’t endorse social distancing until March 16, after many ordinary Americans had already taken up the practices themselves out of fear for the virus. It isn’t clear that the country will obey him if he urges Americans to abandon the behaviors before the outbreak has abated.

Public polling shows that slightly more Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the outbreak than approve, according to RealClearPolitics.

Return to Beaches

Separately, Fauci said in a CBS News interview on Thursday that he sees the U.S. making progress toward a return to normal life in the near future. Federal social-distancing recommendations extend to April 30.

“Hopefully, by the time we get to the summer, we will have taken many steps in that direction,” he said. But he cautioned that different areas of the U.S. may see the outbreak peak at different times, which may require a range of timetables.

Fauci was asked if he can envision Americans returning to beaches, celebrations, and other normal seasonal activities in the summer.

“Yes,” he said, “if we do the things that we need to do to prevent the resurgence.”

(Updates with additional Fauci, Birx comments starting in third paragraph.)

--With assistance from Kasia Klimasinska and Josh Wingrove.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Kathleen Miller in Washington at kmiller01@bloomberg.net;
Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Michael Shepard at mshepard7@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman, Kathleen Hunter

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