NEW YORK, May 4 (CNA) - Nearly 135,000 Americans were forecast to die from COVID-19 through the beginning of August, almost double the last prediction, due to loosening of lockdowns, according to an updated forecast from the University of Washington on Monday (May 4).

The university's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) said the sharp increase from its last estimate in mid-April reflected rising mobility and the easing of social distancing measures in 31 states by May 11.

Used by the White House, the institute's models tie the increased deaths to increasing contacts among people that promote transmission of the novel coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 respiratory disease.

The revised forecast came after internal US government data projected daily coronavirus case numbers and deaths surging higher through this month, the New York Times and Washington Post reported on Monday, even as President Donald Trump urged states to ease restrictions aimed at quelling the pandemic.

The Trump administration's confidential forecast, based on government modelling, projects that the coronavirus will kill 3,000 Americans a day by the end of May, the Times said, up from a current daily toll that a Reuters tally places at around 2,000.

The confidential report, pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from the current rate of about 25,000 cases every 24 hours, the Times said.

The Post reported similarly that a "draft" government document predicted a sharp increase in both known coronavirus infections and deaths beginning around May 14 and escalating to a rate of about 200,000 new cases and 3,000 new fatalities each day by June 1.

The Post quoted a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health professor of epidemiology involved in the work as saying the data contained a wide range of possibilities and modelling and was shown to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a work in progress.

TRUMP'S PREDICTIONS

Asked about the Times report, White House spokesman Judd Deere said: “This is not a White House document, nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting."

The highly contagious coronavirus is known to have infected more than 1.1 million Americans, including nearly 68,000 who have died from COVID-19, according to Reuters' own tally.

Trump has given varying predictions for the number of people in the United States who will succumb to COVID-19, which has no vaccine or known cure.

As recently as Friday the president had said he hoped fewer than 100,000 Americans would die, and last week had talked of 60,000 to 70,000 deaths.

But on Sunday night the president acknowledged the death toll may climb much higher.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing,” he told Fox News.