"This is not a White House document nor has it been presented to the task force or gone through interagency vetting," White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said on Monday. "This data is not reflective of any of the modelling done by the Coronavirus Task Force or data that the task force has analyzed."
Earlier on Monday, the New York Times reported that a CDC-FEMA document projects a possible 200,000 new COVID-19 cases per day by the end of May. That figure would be eight times the current level of 25,000 new cases per day, the report said.
The figures were listed on a chart drawn up by FEMA and based on data supplied by the CDC, the report said. The current number of deaths per day from the pandemic is 1,750, the paper noted.
The more alarming projections are based on the now rapid and increasing spread of the pandemic across areas of heartland America that had previously escaped most of the pandemic. Rural heartland counties such as Logansport in Indiana, South Sioux City in Nebraska and Marion in Ohio already have more cases per capita than New York City, the report noted.
