President Joe Biden has painted a bleak picture of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak in his first few days in office, warning that it will take months to turn around the pandemic’s trajectory and that fatalities are expected to dramatically rise over the next few weeks.

“A lot of America is hurting. The virus is surging. We’re 400,000 dead expected to reach well over 600,000,” Biden said on Friday before signing two executive orders designed to reduce hunger and bolster workers’ rights amid the pandemic.

Biden has dismissed the idea that the goal might be too low of a threshold, claiming that he was told before he took office that the aim might be too high.

“I find it fascinating that yesterday the press asked the question, ‘Is 100 million enough?’ The week before they said, ’Biden, are you crazy? You can’t do 100 million in 100 days,” the president said during the Friday press briefing. “We’re, God willing, not only going to do 100 million, we’re going to do more than that.”