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President Donald Trump on Sunday railed against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying the agency exaggerates the number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths. The CDC is run by people he appointed himself. The agency has been updating new cases and death counts daily for months. "The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov's ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low," Trump tweeted. "'When in doubt, call it Covid.' Fake News!" (Dzhanova, 1/3)

As the U.S. COVID-19 death toll surpassed 350,000 Sunday, President Trump claimed the country’s fatality count toll was “far exaggerated,” an assertion that was quickly refuted by the nation’s top infectious-diseases expert. “The deaths are real deaths,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an ABC interview. “That’s not fake.” Trump also suggested Sunday on Twitter that states, not the federal government, bore responsibility for a vaccine rollout lagging expectations. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti countered Trump’s assertion, saying states and municipalities had been denied crucial resources to move ahead more expeditiously. (King, 1/3)

"The deaths are real deaths," Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, when asked by [ABC's "This Week" Co-anchor Martha] Raddatz for his response to the president's tweet. "All you need to do is go out into the trenches. Go to the hospitals and see what the health care workers are dealing with. They are under very stressful situations in many areas of the country. The hospital beds are stretched, people are running out of beds, running out of trained personnel who are exhausted." "That's real," he continued. "That's not fake. That's real." (Kelsey, 1/3)

Surgeon General Jerome Adams declined to condemn President Donald Trump on Sunday for calling Covid-19 death figures “far exaggerated,” but he did defend the numbers Trump attacked. “From a health perspective, I have no reason to doubt those numbers,” Adams said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” responding to a question from host Jake Tapper pressing him on a tweet Sunday where the president stated without evidence that Covid-19 numbers have been inflated. (Cohen, 1/3)

With the coronavirus raging in many parts of the country and hospitals dangerously overstretched, public health officials warned on Sunday that more calamitous days may be ahead, as infections tied to holiday gatherings fuel a fresh spate of illness and death. “It’s terrible, it’s unfortunate, but it was predictable,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said on “Meet the Press.” (1/3)

On New Year’s Day at Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park Medical Center in Southern California, the overflowing emergency room spilled into the hallway. Doctors treated patients on oxygen in the waiting room after running out of beds. Some 80% of patients admitted in recent days have Covid-19.In Texas, patients who need to be transferred from small facilities to big metropolitan hospitals sit in limbo for hours or days, putting them at risk of developing complications from delays. Desperate smaller hospitals have flown patients as far as Albuquerque, N.M., and Oklahoma City for an open bed. (Evans, Lovett and Mai-Duc, 1/3)

A top COVID-19 model predicts 150,000 more deaths in the U.S. in the next month as the country heads into what is anticipated to be the worst phase of the pandemic. Projections from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation show the death toll over the next month could be far beyond that of December, which set a record at about 77,500. (Axelrod, 1/2)