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In February, President Trump told the public that the coronavirus should “go away” by April. In March, he said that the virus may “wash” away by summer. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump told the American public that the virus “won’t be coming back in the form that it was” this fall or winter. He then mused that it might not come back at all. The scientists flanking him at a White House briefing explicitly said otherwise. “There will be coronavirus in the fall,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, said as Mr. Trump looked on. (Rogers, 4/22)

“It’s not going to be what we’ve gone through, in any way, shape or form,” Trump said flatly. He continued: “If it comes back, though, it won’t be coming back in the form that it was. It will be coming back in smaller doses that we can contain. ... You could have some embers of corona ... (but) we will not go through what we went through for the last two months.” Trump then turned to Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the coronavirus task force, and asked, “Doctor, wouldn’t you say there’s a good chance that COVID will not come back?” “We don’t know,” Birx responded. (Lemire and Miller, 4/23)

Could the United States face two epidemics at the same time next fall, flu and the coronavirus? That frightening idea was raised by Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during an interview on Tuesday with The Washington Post. He suggested that a new surge in coronavirus cases could coincide with the next flu season, causing an even more difficult crisis than the one the nation is facing now. (Grady, 4/22)

Redfield repeated his warnings that if the two viruses are circulating at the same time it could make it harder for the health care system to respond, though he downplayed the potential severity of the situation. “It doesn't mean it's going to be more, as some people have said, or worse, it's just going to be more difficult because we have to distinguish between the two,” Redfield said, adding that what he wanted to articulate was that more Americans should get the flu vaccine. (Ehley, 4/22)

Vice President Mike Pence said the White House hopes the coronavirus epidemic can be “largely in the past” by early June. Mr. Pence didn’t make a firm prediction about when the U.S. economy can be fully reopened. But he said “the trend lines continue to be encouraging,” including in some of the country’s most hard-hit cities, and offered a generally ambitious timeline for revival of normal activities. (Seib, 4/22)

Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, warned state officials Wednesday that the coronavirus could rebound if they moved too quickly in reopening their economies. "The one way not to reopen the economy is to have a rebound that we can't take care of," Fauci said at a White House news briefing. (Sullivan, 4/22)

The U.S. and the World Health Organization offered divergent messages on the coronavirus pandemic, as Vice President Mike Pence expressed optimism that it could be largely over in the country by early June, while the WHO’s chief warned that most of the world remains susceptible and epidemics can easily reignite. The total number of confirmed infections across 185 countries and regions globally topped 2.63 million on Thursday with more than 183,400 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has about one-third of all confirmed cases world-wide, with over 842,600 infections and a death toll exceeding 46,700, according to Johns Hopkins. (Ping, 4/23)