Trump’s administration privately projects massive spike in coronavirus deaths amid his push for reopening

President Trump speaks during a Fox News virtual town hall from the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday.(Evan Vucci/AP)

As President Trump pushes states to rev up their economies, his emergency and public health officials are privately projecting that the U.S. coronavirus death toll will skyrocket over the next several weeks, reaching roughly 3,000 deaths per day by the end of the month, according to an internal document.

The 19-page document, which was based on federal government models compiled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, projects that the daily U.S. death count will remain around the current level of 1,750 through May 15.

After that, the document, which was first reported by The New York Times on Monday, projects a sharp spike bringing the daily death count to 3,000 by June 1. The document doesn’t project death tolls beyond June 1, but a graph included in the report points further upward.

In addition to the grim death projection, the intra-government document predicts that the number of new COVID-19 infections per day will shoot up more than eightfold, reaching about 200,000 cases per day by the beginning of June, compared to the current level of 25,000.

A White House spokesman dismissed the data provided by the FEMA officials responsible for the dire outlook.

“This is not a White House document nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting," the spokesman, Judd Deere, said Monday afternoon. “This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed.”

FEMA spokespeople did not immediately return requests for comment.

Despite the White House pushback, the alarming predictions signal that the government’s experts have a far grimmer view of the virus than Trump, who’s actively pushing for states to loosen social distancing restrictions and reopen their economies.

In a Fox News-hosted town hall at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, Trump acknowledged that the U.S. death toll will likely reach 100,000.

Still, even as the horrific count approach 70,000, Trump suggested states should start clawing back stay-at-home orders immediately. He also threw a bone to right-wing protesters.

“I think a lot of people want to go back. They just want to go back. You see it every day. You see demonstrations all over the country and those are meaningful demonstrations,” Trump said.

Anti-social distancing protesters in states like Michigan and Wisconsin have been seen touting confederate flags and assault rifles during demonstrations outside their state capitols.