Dr. Anthony Fauci said on the Today Show “this is going to be a very bad week” but expressed hope that the country will soon turn the corner. The coronavirus task force member also said the projected death toll for the coronavirus has dropped significantly.

“The number of deaths and the cases that we’re seeing right now are really validating what we said, that this is going to be a very bad week on the one hand,” Fauci told Savannah Guthrie. “On the other hand, as you can see there are some glimmers of hope, particularly when you look at the situation in New York where the number of hospitalizations, requirements for intensive care and intubation over the last few days have actually stabilized and starting to come down.”

Guthrie asked Fauci if the country is successfully flattening the curve, to which he replied: “I don’t want to jump the gun on that, but I think that is the case.”

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said the projected death toll “looks more like 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000” the coronavirus task force had previously predicted.

“I think the American public have done a really terrific job of just buckling down and doing those physical separation and adhering to those guidelines,” Fauci said, though he warned against abandoning social distancing measures taken.

“Having said that we better be careful that we don’t say, okay, we’re doing so well we could pull back. We still have to put our foot on the accelerator when it comes to the mitigation and the physical separation.”

Fauci also expressed hope that companies would be able to manufacture “a large number” of antibody tests within weeks.

Watch above, via NBC.

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