The White House’s Coronavirus Task Force will hold its daily press briefing at 5 p.m. EST on Wednesday to discuss recent developments related to COVID-19. President Donald Trump is expected to appear, according to his pubic schedule. Vice President Mike Pence, the task force’s chair, regularly attends the briefings alongside various members including its response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Interested viewers can watch Wednesday’s conference through multiple means. The event will be available to stream live at both the White House’s official website and YouTube page, while C-Span is due to broadcast it on television.
The White House has provided the public with daily updates regarding COVID-19 since the new coronavirus first took hold in the United States. As Johns Hopkins University’s tracker reported Wednesday morning, close to 875,000 incidences of the virus have now been confirmed worldwide. More than 43,000 people have died as a result, while 176,000 have recovered. The U.S. has recorded the most positive COVID-19 cases of any country impacted by the disease, with upwards of 189,600 total diagnoses as of Wednesday. The nation’s death toll recently surpassed 4,000, though more than 7,100 citizens have recovered after contracting the illness.
During Tuesday’s task force briefing, Drs. Birx and Fauci shared projections that estimate the U.S. will see between 100,000 and 240,000 domestic fatalities as the pandemic continues to unfold.
Birx and Fauci explained that there could be more deaths from COVID-19 if the public does not adhere to the White House’s social distancing guidelines, originally issued March 16 and intended to last two weeks. The measures, which called for widespread isolation practices and nonessential business closures, will now be in effect until April 30, as Trump announced Monday.
“This is not the time to take your foot off the accelerator,” Fauci said during Tuesday’s briefing, expressing support for the guidelines’ elongated timeline. In his own Tuesday remarks, Trump— who proposed the U.S. would be restored to its pre-pandemic state by April 12 eight days ago and amended the date to June 1 over the weekend—told the U.S. to prepare for “a very tough two weeks.”
“And then hopefully, as the experts are predicting, as I think a lot of us are predicting after having studied it so hard, we’re going to start seeing some real light at the end of the tunnel,” he continued. “But this is going to be a very, very painful two weeks.”
