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WASHINGTON — The US should expect between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths from the coronavirus, the White House said Tuesday.

That is “what would happen if people stayed home, what would happen if people were careful every day to wash their hands and worry about touching their faces,” Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, said at President Donald Trump’s daily coronavirus press conference. “What an extraordinary thing this could be if every American followed these.”

Birx added that she is hopeful that the numbers could be lower. “We really believe and hope every day we can do a lot better than that, because that’s not assuming 100% of every American, everything they are supposed to be doing. But I think that's possible,” she said.

However, if people don’t follow the government’s mitigation guidance, Birx warned, projections show that, on the high end, the US could see between 1.5 million and 2.2 million deaths.

While the White House task force showed charts with the top-line deaths at 240,000, Birx repeatedly said during the press conference that 200,000 was the high end of what the US government is currently expecting. When asked if and why those numbers had changed, Birx said, “It just has to do with if you had more New Yorks and New Jerseys. Chicago, Detroit, LA, Dallas, Houston — all of our major cities, modeled like New York, that's what gets us in trouble. But I am reassured by looking at the Seattle line, by looking at the LA Line, by looking at what California has been able to do, that that is not something that — I don't believe that's gonna happen. That is the outside case of having 10, 15 metro [area]s like New York and the New Jersey metro area.”