Trump: It's "possible" some lives will be lost to coronavirus due to U.S. reopening
President Trump said Tuesday it is "possible" that some lives will be lost as states reopen their economies amid the coronavirus pandemic, in an interview with ABC's David Muir.
The big picture: COVID-19 has killed more than 70,500 Americans and infected over 1.1 million in roughly three months since the country's first known death. Over 180,000 Americans have recovered from the virus, and more than 7.1 million tests have been conducted as of Tuesday.
- More than 1,000 people have died each day since April 1, and the virus may have killed more people than we're currently aware of.
What Trump's saying: "It's possible there will be some, because you won't be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is. But at the same time, we're going to practice social distancing, we're going to be washing hands, we're going to be doing a lot of the things that we've learned to do over the last period of time, and we have to get our country back."
- "You know, people are dying the other way too, when you look at what's happened with drugs, it goes up. When you look at suicides, I mean take a look at what's going on, people are losing their jobs, we have to bring it back, and that's what we're doing," he said.
Go deeper: Trump suggests keeping coronavirus death toll to 100,000 would be sign of success