Commuters social distance while waiting for a train at the Fulton Street subway station and complex on Tuesday in lower Manhattan in New York City. Photo: AFP

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he disagrees with the assessment of the country's top immunologist, Anthony Fauci, on the dire situation the US faces as cases of the novel coronavirus continue to spread.

"The current state is really not good," the highly respected Fauci, Head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a Facebook and Twitter livestream on Monday.

"We are still knee deep in the first wave of COVID-19 infections," he said.

Trump, speaking Tuesday in a TV interview, disagreed with Fauci, a key player on the White House's own Coronavirus Task Force.

"I think we are in a good place," the president said in an interview on the "Full Court Press" news show hosted by a former Fox News anchor, adding: "I disagree with him."

"Dr Fauci said don't wear masks, now he says wear them," he continued, adding that the immunologist has "said numerous things" that according to Trump were bad advice.

"So we've done a good job. I think we are going to be in two, three, four weeks, by the time we next speak, I think we are going to be in very good shape," Trump added.

The US has fared poorly in its handling of the pandemic, with more than 130,000 people losing their lives, the highest death toll in the world by far. Currently there is a surge of cases in the south and the west after regional officials began to relax restrictions.

Trump has downplayed the ever-rising number of daily cases, blaming them instead on increased testing.

AFP