A woman walks past temporarily closed shops at a shopping mall in Washington D.C., the United States, May 7, 2020. (LIU JIE / XINHUA)

While expressing optimism that the economy will improve later this year, White House officials are involved in informal talks with Congress to approve another round of coronavirus relief legislation, officials said on Sunday.

"The reported numbers are probably going to get worse before they get better," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Fox News on Sunday, adding: "We'll have a better third quarter, we'll have a better fourth quarter, and next year is going to be a great year."

Officials in the administration of the United States, including Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, said they were holding discussions with lawmakers on issues including potential aid to states whose finances have been devastated by the pandemic.

The reported numbers are probably going to get worse before they get better. We'll have a better third quarter, we'll have a better fourth quarter, and next year is going to be a great year.

Steven Mnuchin, US treasury secretary

As of early Monday, the US had recorded 79,528 deaths in the outbreak, with the number of cases surging to near 1.33 million.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he is "in no rush" to negotiate another stimulus package, as the Labor Department reported that unemployment rose to 14.7 percent in April, the worst figure since the Great Depression.

Over the past two months, the White House and bipartisan coalitions in Congress have approved US$3 trillion in spending to help companies, workers and the unemployed.

ALSO READ: Half of US states easing virus restrictions, Russia cases surge

Pressure for further action may intensify as the near-term economic picture worsens. On CBS' Face the Nation, Kevin Hassett, another White House economic adviser, said the unemployment rate could rise to somewhere "north of 20 percent" in May or June before the economy moves into what administration officials have said will be a robust recovery in late 2020.

On the medical front, a US news magazine said the official data on COVID-19 reported by US media is "a messy undercount of the real picture of the pandemic situation", leading to questions over the reliability of the data.

Flawed processes

The official data are "untrustworthy" because of the "flawed" processes of collecting the data, The Atlantic said in an article on its website.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, says it "does not know the exact number of COVID-19 illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths for a variety of reasons."

It also says that in the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and those reported by state and local health authorities, "data reported by states should be considered the most up to date."

However, even states that frequently publish such data do not all record or report data with the same level of standardization, US media said.

READ MORE: As US death toll tops 51,000, states move toward reopening

"Far from being exaggerated, experts believe the true number of people who have died from COVID-19 is actually higher than what's been reported," said a HuffPost report on Sunday.

Currently, many media outlets refer to data collected by research institutions. In addition to the Johns Hopkins University data, they also cite figures provided by Worldometer, which is run by an international team of developers, researchers, and volunteers. NBC and some other news outlets have their own COVID-19 case trackers.

As for coronavirus testing, which is essential for states to make decisions on lifting stay-at-home orders and reopening businesses, media outlets are relying on the data provided by the Covid Tracking Project, a volunteer organization launched by The Atlantic.

Contact the writers through andrewcohen@chinadailyusa.com

Pan Mengqi in Beijing and Xinhua contributed to this story.