The US recorded 1,514 Covid-19 related deaths, lower than the previous day’s toll of 1,920, over the past 24 hours, Johns Hopkins University tally showed as of 8:30pm Sunday (0030 GMT Monday).
The outbreak has now claimed the lives of at least 22,020 people in the US, the most of any country.
The United States also leads the world by far in the number of confirmed infections, with 555,313 by the Baltimore-based university’s count.
The country has been recording nearly 2,000 deaths a day from the coronavirus, disproportionately older people with weakened immune systems and ethnic minorities with less access to health care and teleworking.
The US, which has 4.25% of the world’s population, accounts for almost a fifth of the world’s nearly 114,180 deaths from Covid-19 since the disease first emerged in China in December last year.
‘Start reopening in May’
Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious diseases expert, said on Sunday that the country may be ready to start gradually reopening next month, as signs grew that the coronavirus pandemic was peaking.
Fauci, the veteran pandemic expert, said in an interview to CNN that parts of the country could begin easing restrictions in May. But Fauci was cautious as well.
“I think it could probably start at least in some ways maybe next month,” Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN.
“We are hoping by the end of the month we can look around and say, OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on? If so, do it. If not, then just continue to hunker down,” Fauci said.
US President Donald Trump had earlier wanted the world’s largest economy to be “raring to go” by Easter Sunday, but most of the country remained at a standstill and churches took celebrations online to halt the spread of the virus that has killed more than 22,000 people in the US.
Trump has cast the decision on when to ease the lockdown as the biggest of his presidency as he faces competing pressures from public health experts and businesses along with some conservative allies who want a swift return to normality.
Fauci said that regions would be ready at different times rather than the US turning back on like a “light switch.”
Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, told ABC he was “hopeful” about reopening on May 1. “I think it’s too early to be able to tell that,” he added.
‘Need to be smart’
Lockdown decisions, unlike in many western countries, are primarily up to local governments, not the president, and leaders of a number of hard-hit, densely populated states have vowed to act as long as necessary.
“We want to reopen as soon as possible. The caveat is we need to be smart in the way we reopen,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters.
Neighbouring New Jersey’s governor, fellow Democrat Phil Murphy, said that an economic recovery depended on a “full health-care recovery.”
If “we start to get back on our feet too soon, I fear, based on the data we’re looking at, we could be throwing gasoline on the fire,” Murphy told CBS.
Trump, for his part, wrote on Twitter Sunday: “We are winning, and will win, the war on the Invisible Enemy!”
Also read: Virus airborne up to 4 metres, health staff at high risk
Worst-hit New York recorded another 758 coronavirus deaths, Cuomo said.
“You’re not seeing a great decline in the numbers, but you’re seeing a flattening,” he said.
Fauci similarly said he was “cautiously optimistic” as admissions into hospitals and intensive care had begun to decline.
‘Fake News’
The New York Times, in an extensive article published Sunday, described Trump as failing to act quickly in part due to confidence in his gut instincts and his distrust of civil servants he brands as a conspiratorial “deep state.”
Trump slammed the paper’s story Sunday evening with his favourite insult: “Fake News!”
“The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the ‘paper’ itself,” he tweeted.
“I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so,” he wrote, referring to the ban travel ban on the Asian power.
Fauci, who has advised six successive presidents, acknowledged when asked about the article that the US could have saved lives by shutting down public spaces when the disease’s seriousness became clear early in the year.
“But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then,” Fauci told CNN, without naming Trump.
Trump soon afterwards posted an interview in which Fauci said that the US “early on did not get correct information.”
Trump last week zeroed in on the World Health Organization (WHO) to explain early difficulties, saying the UN body was overly reliant on China when cases first emerged in Wuhan.
Trump had been hoping to campaign on a strong economy as he seeks re-election in November.
Instead, some 17 million people have lost their jobs in a matter of weeks and his presumptive Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has been hammering him over his virus response.
There are 1,846,963 confirmed cases across the world and 114,185 people have been killed, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracker on Monday morning.
