The death toll in the U.S. from the coronavirus crossed the 10,000-mark on Monday as the country entered the most difficult phase during this pandemic, with officials stating that there are encouraging signs in the fight against the dreaded disease, mainly due to the aggressive implementation of the mitigation measures.
By Monday, more than 10,800 Americans died due to the deadly coronavirus and over 366,000 tested positive.
Top American scientists are racing against time to develop either a vaccine or a successful treatment.
In New York, the epicentre of COVID-19 in the US, the fatalities on Monday increased to 4,758 and confirmed cases to 130,000, with officials saying that new cases and deaths have now slowed down in the city.
Members of the White House Task Force on coronavirus said that the new models based on fresh data projects less than 100,000 deaths against the previous projections between 100,000 and 200,000 fatalities.
This has been mainly due to the aggressive implementation of the mitigation strategy.
"We are increasingly hopeful that the aggressive mitigation strategy we put into place will ultimately allow our hospitals system to successfully manage that major influx of cases that we have right now," Trump told reporters at his daily White House news conference.
“The goal is that all Americans have been sacrificing to achieve these last few weeks things that a lot of people thought were not possible to achieve,” he said.
"I think we've more than achieved, but we have to go through.
Again, we're going to have a rough week, were going to have, maybe, a rough little more than a week but there's tremendous light at the end of that tunnel,” he said.
According to the president, there are so many things happening with therapeutics, and with vaccines.
"Those therapeutics, the vaccines are going to be always a little bit later because of that testing period, but the therapeutics, getting the kind of things that I heard about today talking to these brilliant companies and brilliant people on the phone was fantastic," he said.
Currently there are 10 different therapeutic agents in active trials and some are looking incredibly successful, he said, adding that another 15 are in plans for clinical trials.
A second company announced that the US Food and Drug Administration has authorised its vaccine candidate to begin critical trials, Trump said. ■