Trump also described Easter Sunday — which he had floated just last week as the date he would move to restart the U.S. economy — as now the likely apex of America’s coronavirus outbreak, when the number of deaths as a result of the public health crisis would reach their highest levels.

“We’re thinking that around Easter, that’s going to be your spike. That’s going to be the highest point, we think,” he said. “And then it’s going to start coming down from there. That will be a day of celebration.”

Americans will be able to “see some real progress” in halting the rapid spread of the disease by the end of April, Trump said. “And then, by a little short of June, maybe June 1, we think the — you know, it’s a terrible thing to say, but we think the death will be at a very low number. It’ll be brought down to a very low number from right now, from where it’s getting to reach its peak,” he added.

Fauci said Trump did not require much persuading to continue the administration’s “15 Days to Slow the Spread” initiative, which was slated to end on Monday, for another 30 days.

“Dr. Debbie Birx and I went in together in the Oval Office and leaned over the desk and said, ‘Here are the data. Take a look,’” Fauci told CNN’s “New Day,” recounting his meeting with Trump on Sunday. “He looked at them, he understood them, and he just shook his head and said, ‘I guess we got to do it.’”

Fauci said he and Birx “argued strongly with the president” to keep up the guidelines, and “made it very clear to him that if we pull back on what we were doing and didn’t extend them, there would be more avoidable suffering and avoidable death.”

The administration has projected that roughly 100,000-200,000 Americans could perish from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and millions could potentially become infected. Birx on Monday said those figures represented an optimistic prediction of the coming loss of life.

“If we do things together well, almost perfectly, we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities,” she told NBC’s “Today” show, chiding certain metro areas across the country for being too late to follow the administration’s guidelines.

“The best-case scenario would be 100 percent of Americans doing precisely what is required,” she said. “But we’re not sure ... that all of America is responding in a uniform way to protect one another, so we also have to factor that in.”

The president’s remarks on Monday, after an about-face in his bid to wind down social-distancing measures, signal a new willingness to heed the opinions of public health experts with whom he had previously broken in numerous public statements during the pandemic’s earlier stages.

Eager to head off an imminent recession and curb soaring unemployment claims, Trump defied scientific consensus in recent days by advocating for most Americans to return to work while monitoring those at greater risk of contracting the coronavirus. He also previewed a new plan aimed at reopening parts of the country via a targeted, county-by-county mitigation effort.

But asked on Monday how he would respond if his White House coronavirus task force urged maintaining social distancing into May, Trump again recognized Fauci and Birx and said he would “rely on” the judgment of senior health officials.

“Anthony and Deborah have been doing this for many years, and I’m going to rely on them,” he said. “But, you know, I think that — hey, the worst thing we can do is declare victory. We’ve seen this: declare victory, and then not have victory, and then have to do it all over again. We have to get this thing gone, this virus. We have to beat it. We’re at war. This is a war.”