President Trump said during a virtual town hall on Sunday night that the US could see up to 100,000 deaths due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump — speaking at the Lincoln Memorial on Fox News — had given the estimate one month after predicting the virus would likely cause the deaths of 60,000 to 70,000 people nationwide.
“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80, to 100,000 people,” Trump said on Sunday night. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”
The president said the death toll could have been more drastic if his administration did not take swift action.
“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,” Trump said.
“We would have lost probably higher, it’s possible higher than 2.2.”
More than 67,000 people in the US have perished from the illness.
