U.S. could see 100,000-200,000 coronavirus deaths, warns Fauci

Anthony Fauci said Sunday that as many as 200,000 Americans could die of coronavirus.(JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and part of President Trump’s coronavirus task force, offered grim projects Sunday.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning, Fauci warned that the United States could see “between 100,000 and 200,000” deaths before the pandemic is over and "millions of cases."

“I just don’t think that we really need to make a projection when it’s such a moving target, that you could so easily be wrong,” he told host Jake Tapper. “What we do know is we have a serious problem in New York, we have a serious problem in New Orleans and we’re going to be developing serious problems in other areas.”

As of Saturday, more than 121,000 people in the U.S. have tested positive for coronavirus. Of those, more than 2,000 people have died.

President Trump threatened Saturday to instate a quarantine in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, but backed off and instead issued a travel advisory.

Fauci said he spoke to Trump and convinced him that the advisory was “much better.”

“The reason for that is you don’t want to get to the point that you’re enforcing things that would create a bigger difficulty, morale and otherwise, when you could probably accomplish the same goal," he said on “State of the Union."

“What was trying to be done is to get people, unless there’s necessary travel, so all nonessential travel, just hold off, because what you don’t want is people traveling from that area to other areas of the country and inadvertently and innocently infecting other individuals.”