Trump vows to reopen US economy even as deaths from coronavirus rise

Donald Trump has said he is eager to reopen the US economy in weeks not months – even as the death toll from the virus continued to rise.

The president, who is anxious about the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the US economy, made the remarks at a White House press briefing Monday in which he repeatedly refused to confirm that he would listen to public health authorities if they advised him to keep restrictive public health measures in place, even at a cost to the economy.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said.

White House officials announced at the briefing that New York City, New Jersey and Long Island were emerging as a concerning hotspot for many new coronavirus cases.

The US reported more than 100 deaths on Monday, the first time the daily death toll has entered the triple digits. There have been 557 deaths and nearly 44,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

But in his remarks, Trump focused on states across the country that had seen few confirmed coronavirus cases so far – rural states such as Nebraska, Iowa, and Idaho. The president argued that it was essential to the economy be “opening up our country” again as soon as possible.

“Our country was not built to be shut down,” Trump said. “This is not a country that was built for this.”

During the briefing, White House officials praised Americans for their “selflessness” in the first week of widespread restrictions. Trump’s top advisers referred to current government restrictions as a “15-day challenge” and pledged to revisit the need for sweeping measures to prevent the spread of the virus in just another week.

Trump said he expected life to return to normal very soon, much sooner than in three or four months. Asked if he meant the country would be re-opening in “weeks or months”, Trump said: “I’m not looking at months, I can tell you right now.”

Asked if Dr Anthony Fauci, the immunologist who has become the public face of the American scientific community during the pandemic, agreed with him on potentially re-opening the economy, Trump said: “He doesn’t not agree.”

Related: Trump signals change in coronavirus strategy that could clash with health experts

Trump added: “[Fauci] understands there’s a tremendous cost to our country.”

Fauci, who has spoken publicly about the challenges of focusing on facts even as Trump’s White House has sometimes undermined them, was not present at Monday’s briefing.

As the record-high stock market has plummeted and then plummeted again, Trump has raised concerns that the “cure” for the virus could be “worse than the problem itself”. During the press conference, Trump repeatedly argued that a damaged American economy could create “more death” than potential deaths from the coronavirus, because of an association between economic crisis and suicide.

Trump said: “People get tremendous anxiety and depression and you have suicide over things like this, when you have a terrible economy, you have death, definitely … in far greater numbers than we’re talking about with regard to the virus.”

Although it is reasonable to suggest that a recession can increase the risk of a rise in suicides, experts caution that there is no single cause of suicide.

According to research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, North America and Europe experienced 10,000 more suicides during the 2008 recession. The outbreak of Sars in Hong Kong in 2002 and 2003 also led to a “significant increase” in suicides in those over age 65, according to 2010 research.

But early projections for the toll of the coronavirus in the United States suggest it could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, even at the lowest end of ranges of estimates.

Figures for the coronavirus mortality rate continues to evolve, but research from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began, indicates the death rate there was about 1.4%. Experts at Harvard University have projected an infection rate in the US of between 20% and 60%, meaning that although it is impossible to reliably estimate the American coronavirus toll, a reasonable scenario might result in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

At the Monday briefing, Trump said he found the emerging data encouraging. Asked if he was concerned that if he eased government restrictions to prevent coronavirus “too early” the virus might continue to spread rapidly, he said the mortality rate for coronavirus was not as bad as had been initially feared.

Trump said: “I mean, we started off – we were hearing numbers of 5% [mortality rate]. That would – that’s an astronomical number, when the flu is .001 and two and three, right? And so 5% would be an astronomical number.”

Now, Trump said, he was hearing potential mortality rate numbers that were lower.

“The whole concept of death is terrible, but there’s a tremendous difference between something under 1% and 4 or 5 or even 3%,” the president said.

On one issue, Trump expressed some interest in the possibility that coronavirus might reshape American life forever.

As he looked out at the much-more-empty than usual White House briefing room, with journalists carefully spaced out to follow public health guidelines, Trump noted that the briefing room had once been full of lots of “angry people who don’t like me”.

“Will we ever have that again, or … it will look like this forever?” Trump asked his coronavirus response coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx.

Attorney general Bill Barr, who was standing behind Trump, chuckled.

“I don’t know,” Birx said.

Oliver Laughland contributed reporting

• In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.