Trump: COVID-19 death toll in US could reach 100,000

US President Donald Trump says the coronavirus death toll in the United States could reach 100,000, a projection that seems to be a considerable upward shift from his previous estimates.

According to Press TV, less than two weeks ago, Trump said at a White House press briefing that between 50,000 to 60,000 people would die of the virus.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” the president said in a virtual “town hall” meeting at the Lincoln Memorial hosted by Fox News on Sunday night.

Even though he said, “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this,” he credited himself with precluding the toll from getting worse.

“If we didn’t do it, the minimum we would have lost was a million two, a million four, a million five, that’s the minimum. We would have lost probably higher, it’s possible higher than 2.2” million.

A day earlier, Trump told reporters at the White House that "this will be probably the toughest week."

So far, over 1,188,100 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 68,500 have died of the disease across the United States.

Trump’s remarks come as about half of the US states have now moved toward at least a partial ending of lockdowns as the number of new cases has begun to fall or level off.

There have also been protests in some cities across the country against the shutdown, with Trump supporting the protesters, calling them “good people.”

In a tweet on Friday morning, Trump described protesters in Michigan as "very good people," suggesting that the governor should reach a deal with them.

On Thursday, hundreds of people, many of them carrying guns, took to the streets in the Michigan Capitol to protest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's extension of the state's stay-at-home order by another two weeks, to May 15.

ME