Despite growing evidence that the pandemic is still raging, administration officials said on Tuesday that they had made so much progress in bringing it under control that they planned to wind down the coronavirus task force in the coming weeks and focus the White House on restarting the economy.

Vice-President Mike Pence, who has led the task force for two months, said it would probably wrap up its work around the end of the May, and shift management of the public health response back to the federal agencies whose work it was created to coordinate.

Other administration officials said that under plans still in discussion, the White House would consult with medical experts on a more informal basis and that Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and senior adviser, would help oversee a group pushing for progress in developing a vaccine and treatments for the virus.

“It really is all a reflection of the tremendous progress we’ve made as a country,” Pence told reporters at the White House.

His comments came a day after the revelation of new estimates that suggest deaths from the coronavirus, now above 70,000, could double by early August, and that infection rates may rise sharply as businesses reopen.

While the number of new cases logged daily in the New York City area is declining, new cases continue to grow across the rest of the US.

With President Trump facing a tough re-election battle, the White House appears intent on putting a response to the daily death toll more towards the background as it emphasises efforts at a return to economic and job growth.

The President’s advisers have repeatedly tried to place the responsibility for testing and decisions about reopening on individual states.

The task force spent some of its time preparing talking points for Trump, who took over its public briefings, often turning them into lengthy opportunities to air grievances, praise his own handling of the crisis and offer up his own prescriptions.

There were signals in recent days of the task force’s impending demise: The panel did not meet on Saturday, as it typically does, and cancelled a meeting on Monday. And the President has stopped linking his news briefings to the task force’s meetings and no longer routinely arrays task force members around him in his public appearances.

Members of the coronavirus task force, including Dr Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, had to urge Americans not to take those steps. And they often served as a public check on Trump’s questionable or false statements.

While the task force’s advice has sometimes been swept aside by Trump, the group was a comforting symbol for people scared about the virus’s spread and looking for a sign the White House was taking it seriously. People closely monitored which members attended, noting any time Dr Anthony S. Fauci, a leading infectious disease expert, was absent.

The decision to phase out the task force has prompted new questions about whether the administration will be adequately organised to address the complex, life-or-death decisions related to the virus and give sufficient voice to scientists in making policy.