President Donald Trump says the US has “passed the peak” of new Covid-19 cases and predicted some states would reopen this month.
At the daily White House virus briefing, Mr Trump said new reopening guidelines would be announced on Thursday after he speaks to governors.
“We’ll be the comeback kids, all of us,” the president said. “We want to get our country back.”
The US has nearly 640,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and over 30,800 deaths.
“The data suggests that nationwide, we have passed the peak of new cases,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden on Wednesday.
“Hopefully that will continue, and we will continue to make great progress.”
Asked why the US accounted for such a significant proportion of the global death toll of 136,908, Mr Trump accused other countries of lying about their mortality rate.
“Does anybody really believe the numbers of some of these countries?” he said, naming China.
He also said the US was looking into unverified reports that the coronavirus emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan rather than in a market.
The Trump administration has previously pencilled in 1 May as a possible date to reopen the nation, but the president said some states may be able to return to normalcy earlier than that.
When questioned about the dangers of reopening the nation too soon, Mr Trump said: “There’s also death involved in keeping it closed.”
He cited mental health issues, saying suicide hotlines were “exploding” as the economy freezes.