The Coronavirus pandemic has taken it toll on the United States causing much worry for President Donald Trump. American scientists on Tuesday estimated that the COVID-19 could kill between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans. This was reported by The New York Times.
The next couple of weeks will be “very, very painful” and “rough,” Trump said during a White House briefing today (March 31). Without mitigation measures, between 1.5 million to 2.2 million people in the U.S. would die from COVID-19, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator said during the briefing. But with social distancing and other mitigation efforts, those numbers can be brought down to several hundred thousand deaths. Still, that is “way too much,” she said. Livescience.com reported.
But “we can influence this to a varying degree” with mitigation efforts, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said later on in the briefing.
These estimates are generally in line with those from various research institutions around the world, according to the New York Times.
One model, from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, forecasts that the United States will see a rapid rise in COVID-19 deaths in the coming weeks, reaching its peak on April 15, with 2,214 deaths per day. Although the rate of deaths is predicted to slow down during the summer, total deaths could reach nearly 84,000 by the beginning of August. In that model, the upper bounds of the researchers’ estimates was 152,000 deaths by Aug. 1.
Meanwhile Trump is facing a tough time dealing with state Governors over shortage of medical testing kits.
The US now has more Covid-19 fatalities than China, where the illness was first reported.