Federal agencies warn in private conference calls that reopening too soon could worsen the coronavirus outbreak and exhaust the nation's reserves of equipment

• Multiple federal agencies are sounding the alarm behind closed doors that reopening too soon could have catastrophic consequences for the US' supplies of key equipment, Politico reported.
• Trump publicly projects confidence about the availability of key supplies like ventilators, masks, and tests as he encourages states to begin to reopen businesses and get their economies back on tracks.
• But on recordings of calls obtained by Politico, officials from FEMA, HHS, and the CDC warned of crucial shortages of personal protective equipment and testing equipment in many regions of the country.
• In a May 1 call, one official said that if lockdowns are prematurely lifted and cases increases, it could exhaust the nation's ventilator supply by early June.
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As President Donald Trump projects a message of optimism about the coronavirus outbreak in the US, his own federal agencies are sounding the alarm behind closed doors that reopening too soon could have catastrophic consequences.

Politico reported on Wednesday that over the past few weeks officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have warned in a series of phone calls that the US' current stockpiles of medical equipment and gear are not adequate to handle another surge in COVID-19 cases.

As of Wednesday morning, there are 1.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and over 71,000 reported deaths from the disease.

In audio recordings of April 24 and May 1 calls obtained by Politico, officials from FEMA warned that several regions and medical providers in many regions of the country are running dangerously low on hospital gowns and other gear, with one official representing the southeast saying on May 1, "our main PPE shortfalls continue to be along the lines of gloves and gowns."

Trump has publicly projected confidence about the availability of key supplies like ventilators, masks, and coronavirus tests, while at some points placing the blame on states for not having enough supplies.

"Ventilators, which were few & in bad shape, are now being produced in the thousands, and we have many to spare," Trump wrote in a Wednesday morning series of tweets, adding that "Face masks & shields, gloves, gowns etc. are now plentiful."

A White House official touted the Trump administration's "historic public-private partnership designed to secure and deliver these critical supplies to everyone who needs them in record time" to Politico. But federal officials, on a number of private calls, drew a starkly different picture of the US' preparedness for continuing to fight the pandemic and warned of crucial shortages in key areas.

Despite Trump claiming that US has more than enough ventilators to even help out other countries, officials warned that lifting lockdown, and the accompanying rise in severe coronavirus cases, would exceed the US' current ventilator capacity.

"If, at the end of stay-at-home orders, you were to lift everything and go back to normal business, and not have any community mitigation, you would expect to see in the second week in May we begin to increase again in ventilator uses," one official said on a May 1 interagency call, according to Politico. "Which means cases increase, and by early June, we surpass the number of ventilators we currently have."

Politico reported that while Trump boasts about the United States' ventilator supply, one model shown in a presentation slide in one of the calls presented a scenario where lockdown are eased, cases rise again, and the all the country's ventilators are used up by the first week of June.

In his Wednesday morning tweets, Trump claimed that "after having been left little, we are now doing more testing than all other countries combined, and with superior tests." But officials said that many states still lack the necessary equipment to ramp up rates of coronavirus testing in many states.

"Funding and staff is not an inhibitor," an official said of testing on a May 1 interagency call. "It's the ability to secure testing supplies and PPE."

Additionally, officials noted on the May 1 call that many smaller clinics and community-based healthcare services who are looking to reopen as restrictions are eased may not have adequate personal protective equipment.

"We don't have full visibility on health care settings outside of hospitals and nursing homes, and we don't have baseline data to understand what 'normal' looks like," said Capt. John Redd, an epidemiologist at the CDC.

A number of elected officials, including Trump himself and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, are itching to allow businesses to reopen in order to get the US economy back on track — and are acknowledging that such a strategy will lead to more deaths.

"There'll be more death, that the virus will pass, with or without a vaccine," Trump told ABC's David Muir in a Tuesday night interview. "And I think we're doing very well on the vaccines but, with or without a vaccine, it's going to pass, and we're going to be back to normal."

Trump also implied that ordering or recommending people to stay at home could lead to more deaths, saying, "we have to get our country back, you know, people are dying the other way too when you look at what's happened with drugs, it goes up, when you look at suicides."