WASHINGTON, March 30. /TASS/. The US administration is expecting that the coronavirus outbreak in the country will slowly pass by summer, US President Donald Trump told a briefing at the White House on Sunday.
He explained that experts’ assessments show that the coronavirus curve will reach the "bottom of the hill" by June 1. "We can reach the bottom of that hill by June 1," the US leader said. "That would be a great thing."
Trump explained that, according to experts’ forecasts, the US would hit the peak death rate in two weeks but if the introduced social-distancing guidelines are observed, the country could start to recover by summer.
On Wednesday, Trump confirmed that he would like to at least partially reopen private businesses hugely affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak in the country by Easter. At the same time, head of the US administration assured that he would take into account doctors’ recommendation, particularly those from director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator.
The Johns Hopkins University, which calculates statistics based on the government, WHO and other official source numbers, the US has more than 139,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, while over 2,400 people died from it.
In late December 2019, Chinese authorities notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in more than 160 countries, including Russia.
The WHO on March 11 declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. As of now, more than 710,000 people have been infected around the world and over 33,000 have died.