By Jake Tapper and Caroline Kelly | CNN
The White House coronavirus task force will start to wind down later this month, a senior White House official told CNN on Tuesday.
The official said the task force “will be phased down around Memorial Day. We will continue to have key medical experts advising (President Donald Trump) daily and accessible to press throughout the coming months ahead.”
The New York Times first reported the White House’s plan to wind down the task force.
News of the plan to phase out the task force comes as the rate of the country’s daily new Covid-19 cases and reported deaths plateau, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center. However, the influential model created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projected a doubling of US deaths — to 134,000 by August 4 — and an increased daily death toll as governors, urged on by Trump, relax social distancing measures.
The move would quash the most visible nerve center for the federal government’s response to the virus.
The news comes a little more than a week after CNN reported that the task force might soon begin slowly scaling back its number of meetings altogether, according to a source, as Trump and Vice President Mike Pence schedule other events.
Officials said that the task force’s end may never be officially announced and no clear replacement group appears ready to commence in its wake, the Times reported.
Separate key coronavirus models surfaced this week forecasting that thousands may die daily in the United States from Covid-19 in the months ahead.
