US President Donald Trump on Tuesday hinted toward a very safe phased and gradual reopening of economy soon even as he admitted that more Americans will die of Coronavirus in the process.

He underlined his insistence on a dwindling coronavirus threat by refusing to wear a mask, even as he toured a mask-making factory.

Asked by ABC News whether a lifting of social distancing measures and reopening of the shuttered economy will lead to higher death tolls, Trump said “it’s possible there will be some.”

“Because you won’t be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is,” Trump said at the Honeywell factory in Phoenix, Arizona, which he visited on his first major trip since the Coronavirus lockdown began.

“Will some people be affected badly? Yes,” he admitted earlier at the factory. “But we have to get our country open.”

Trump’s November reelection campaign is reeling from the massive shutdown ordered to try and stop the spread of the virus, which has already killed 70,000 Americans and is forecast to take tens of thousands more lives.

Praising the Honeywell workers, who churn out masks used by medical staff and other first responders, Trump reiterated that it’s time to look ahead.

“I want to be a cheerleader,” he said.

Bolstering that shift of direction, the White House said that Trump’s emergency coordination group for the pandemic would be disbanding, probably by early June.

Trump earlier said that if the US administration had done things in a different way, the country would have lost much more lives, much more than 2 million people.

“We did it the right way… We did everything right but now it’s time to go back to work,” the President asserted.

President Donald Trump thanking the citizens for their commitment, said that the US has flattened the Coronavirus curve and countless American lives have been saved.

“Our country is now in the next stage of the battle – a very safe phased and gradual reopening, reopening our country,” he said.

The President also tweeted a chart on US’ great testing “miracle” compared to other countries in an indirect attack on the “Do Nothing Democrats” and their “Fake News partners” for their constant criticism.

The President also said America is doing something very dramatic and that “there hasn’t been anything like what we have done since the mobilisation since World War II.”

“We have dramatically accelerated development of new therapies and potential vaccines. We have 90 clinical trials underway and hundreds more on way,” he said.

“Something is going to happen. Tremendous progress being made. Don’t want to talk about it until it is there. But I will say they really are making progress. Johnson & Johnson folks have been really fantastic. They want to get to it fast. We will all know very soon,” Donald Trump added.

The number of Coronavirus cases in the United States reached 1,201,337 as of 6 pm (2200 GMT) Tuesday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

Meanwhile, the death toll from the disease in the country hit 70,646.

New York remains the hardest-hit state, with 321,192 cases and 25,073 deaths, followed by New Jersey with 130,593 cases and 8,244 deaths. Other states with over 50,000 cases include Massachusetts, Illinois, California, and Pennsylvania, according to the CSSE.

The number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States topped 70,000, representing over a quarter of all the virus deaths reported worldwide, as Americans give negative marks for the federal government’s handling of the outbreak.

While Americans overwhelmingly think highly of what federal scientists have done to deal with the contagion, they continue to give President Donald Trump negative marks for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, showed The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released on Tuesday.

The poll surveyed a random national sample of 1,005 adults by phone from April 28 to May 3. It has a 3.5-point margin of error.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, earned 74 per cent of positive rating and won widespread bipartisan consent, showed the poll.

The nation’s top infectious disease expert gained approval from more than two-thirds of Republicans and independents, and nearly nine in 10 Democrats.

Trump’s ratings are 44 percent positive and 56 percent negative, with nearly 80 percent Republicans but just about 20 percent Democrats viewing Trump positively as relates to the pandemic, said the poll.

Also, the poll indicated a majority of Americans oppose reopening most businesses despite such measures are being taken in a phased manner in more and more states across the country.

Trump said Tuesday that he will allow 79-year-old Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus response team, to testify before the Republican-controlled Senate next week, but that the expert will be barred from appearing in the House, where the Democrats hold a majority.

After weeks of shutdown measures, many US states have begun to slowly open up. But health experts have expressed concerns that premature opening could lead to a spike in new COVID-19 infections.