It's fake news! Trump says secret FEMA chart warning death toll will hit 3,000 a day by June 'is false' despite key COVID-19 model nearly doubling original fatality projections to 134,000

President Donald Trump has dismissed the leaked secret FEMA charts that warn the daily virus death toll will hit 3,000 by June as 'false' and 'fake news', even though another key COVID-19 model has nearly doubled its fatality projection to over 134,000. 

On Monday two staggering coronavirus projections were released including a private model by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that said the daily death toll of COVID-19 will reach 3,000 cases daily on June 1. 

That number is nearly double the current level of 1,750 deaths a day from the disease.

When asked about the leaked projection, Trump said: 'I know nothing about it. I don’t know anything about it. Nobody told me that.'

'I think it’s – I think it’s false, I think it’s fake news,' he said in an Oval Office interview with the New York Post, denying the leak but not the numbers themselves. 

The White House has said that leaked projection had not been 'presented to the coronavirus task force or gone through interagency vetting.' 

Also on Monday The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington (IHME), which is often cited by the White House, released new models that forecast a death toll prediction of 134,475 fatalities by August 4, a major jump from its previous prediction of 72,433 deaths.  

Today there are over 69,000 deaths from the virus and over one million cases of COVID-19 across the country.  

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The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington - a key coronavirus model often used by the White House - released new projections Monday that forecasts there will be 134,475 COVID-19 fatalities by August 4, nearly double its previous prediction of 72,433 deaths

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On Monday private projections from the Trump administration revealed that the virus death toll will reach 3,000 cases daily on June 1

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Charts: The FEMA / CDC charts are based on incomplete data, according to a Johns Hopkins University academic who gave the data to the government 'as an FYI.' They show that the modelled number of cases is greater than the reported number of cases, but that the opposite applies to deaths

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According to the leaked FEMA chart, daily US deaths will reach 3,000 cases by June 1. That number is nearly double the current level of 1,750 deaths a day from the disease

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On Monday the president dismissed the FEMA chart leak as 'fake news', but didn't deny the staggering numbers themselves

The spikes in the two models are linked to relaxed social distancing measures and increased mobility as states start to reopen businesses.

'These projections are considerably higher than previous estimates, representing the combined effects of death model updates and formally incorporating the effect of changes in mobility and social distancing policies into transmission dynamics,' The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington said. 

IHME director Dr. Christopher Murray said factors that contribute to the heightened death prediction includes states adding presumptive COVID-19 deaths to their statistics and outbreaks in meatpacking plants across the nation.  

Now, he says, the nation needs to worry about how reopening states might compound those numbers even further.  

'I think the challenge for us all is to figure out what's the trajectory of relaxing social distancing on a measured pace that will protect us from big increases or even a full-scale resurgence,' he said to CNN. 

While Trump has denied the leak of the FEMA projections, which were obtained by The New York Times, it is sparking concern over how the virus might proliferate if states continue to reopen.  

Still Trump is raising his rallying call to reopen the country saying: 'We did the right thing and now we’re bringing the country back. And I think there’s a great optimism.'

He said Americans are starting to 'feel good again' and touted that his administration saved 'millions of lives'.  

The leaked Trump administration model forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.

Among their findings were that the number of cases was below the modelled number, which is roughly the mid-point of the range of estimated. But the number of reported deaths was actually above the modelled level. 

And they indicated - despite most of America on stay-at-home orders for the past seven weeks - the spread of the virus has shown no sign of slowing, which means things may get worse when the rest of the country reopens for business. 

The White House said the document was not a part of its Coronavirus Task Force. However the slides were marked as being for an interagency videoconference held by FEMA and the Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDC).  

'This is not a White House document nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting. This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed,' deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement.

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The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington also released this graph showing its death per day projections on Monday. This has a smaller range than the FEMA graphs for daily deaths by June, predicting a range between 233 and 2,611 by June 1

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The Institute shared this projection for hospital resources predicting that the number of hospital beds and ventilators will heavily decrease heading into August

'The President’s phased guidelines to open up America again are a scientific driven approach that the top health and infectious disease experts in the federal government agreed with. 

'The health of the American people remains President Trump’s top priority and that will continue as we monitor the efforts by states to ease restrictions,' he added.  

The projections were based on work from Johns Hopkins University, the Washington Post reported.

Justin Lessler, associate professor of epidemiology with Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, said the projections were based on incomplete data which he had sent to the CDC as 'an FYI.'

'It was not in any way intended to be a forecast,' he told the Washington Post.

The newspaper also reported that the White House has been using other projections, including a 'cubic model' created by the president's council of economic advisers, which shows deaths dropping this month and getting close to zero by mid-May.

However the presence of internal documents in FEMA and CDC which are at odds with that will raise concerns about the speed with with reopening the economy is being encouraged by the White House.  

Twenty-four states have begun a partial reopening with another four starting a partial reopen soon.  

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The new prediction for daily coronavirus deaths is nearly double the current rate

President Donald Trump acknowledged on Sunday that the number of COVID-19 deaths could top 100,000.

'Look, we're going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100 thousand people,' he said during a virtual town hall sponsored by Fox News.

But, he argued, there were people out there who want to get back to work. 

'People are absolutely scared, but there are other people that are scared about being locked in a room and losing their job and not having an income,' he said.

He said he saw no reason why those who want to stay-at-home can't while those who want to return to work can do so. 

'I think you can really have it both ways,' Trump said.

And Dr. Deborah Birx, who is coordinating the coronavirus response for the White House, said there could be up to 240,000 deaths. 

'Our projections have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that’s with full mitigation and us learning from each other of how to social distance,' she said on 'Fox News Sunday.'

Trump has been itching to get businesses open and the economy restarted as more than 30 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in the last five weekly filing periods – meaning that at least 4 per cent of Americans are unemployed.

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Dr. Deborah Birx, who is coordinating the coronavirus response for the White House, said there could be up to 240,000 deaths

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A pedestrian walks past a closed Bloomingdales store covered with plywood, at the Wisconsin Place shopping center, as the coronavirus outbreak continues in Washington state

Economic experts have predicted that the U.S. Gross Domestic Product could drop by 30 per cent, spelling more financial disaster as fallout from the pandemic and that unemployment could reach all-time highs of upwards of 13 per cent.

Trump administration officials have pushed an optimistic message even amid the troublesome numbers.

'We'll see things better in the third quarter, better in the fourth quarter. And as the president said, we'll be back to a great economy next year,' Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Monday on Fox Business News. 

But medical experts have warned that reopening the country too quickly could lead to a second wave of the coronavirus that could be even worse than the first. 

Millions of Americans lost their jobs or were furloughed as companies and small businesses all over the country downsized, severely decreased services or were forced to close in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.

The government already has allocated $2.7 trillion to help ease economic relief and there could be more to come as Democrats and Republicans begin negotiations on another round of legislation.