President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his push to relax the coronavirus lockdown in the United States, warning that the measures could "destroy" the country and that he would "love" to have US reopened by Easter, on April 12.

"A lot of people agree with me. Our country -- it's not built to shut down," he said on Fox News. "You can destroy a country this way by closing it down."

Trump says that starting next week he will "assess" whether to lift social distancing and quarantine measures in order to get the hobbled economy back on track.

"We can't lose a Boeing, we can't lose some of these companies," he said. "If we lose those companies we're talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs, millions of jobs."