Donald Trump said Monday that US officials expect the number of coronavirus cases in the United States to "spike" around Easter Sunday, a reversal from his talk of opening much of the country by 12 April.

The president, during a morning call-in interview with Fox News, continued his focus on the American death toll, saying this: "By a little short of June, maybe June 1m, we think ... the death will be ... brought down to a very low number."

Despite revising his own timeline for the virus spread subsiding on US soil, Mr Trump claimed the country is "getting close" to "winning" what he again called a "war" against the COVID-19 disease outbreak.

That came as his top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, was back on television saying there could be up to 100,000 deaths from the virus inside the United States.

"We have a very low morality rate," Mr Trump said. "And there are reasons for that."

He contended that had his administration not taken certain steps, like banning travellers from China, 2.2m Americans could have died. (The US death toll now is over 2,000.)

Two days after he floated a quarantine and strict travel restrictions for New York City, and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, the president knocked down a question about closing airports to help stop the virus's spread. "We're looking at opening things up before closing" down more public gathering spaces. Without explaining, he said closing things like airports would be too difficult, suggesting the economic hit would be too high.

A day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Mr Trump's early response to warnings the virus was headed to the United States "deadly," the president called the California Democrat a "sick puppy."

"She's got a lot of problems, in my opinion," he said without providing details of those alleged issues. "There's something wrong with the woman."

The president then slammed San Francisco, where Ms Pelosi lives, calling it a "slum" and saying the federal government might take control of the region to address its alleged problems.

Trump calls Pelosi a 'sick puppy' for attacking him