The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 will nearly double by September, the head of the Harvard Global Health Institute said Thursday.
Dr. Ashish Jha predicted on the “Today” show on NBC that the United States will see between 800 and 1,000 deaths a day from the flu-like respiratory disease, and that is without any unexpected surges over the summer.
“Over the next three months, we will cross the 200,000 mark,” Jha said. “Sometime in September, we’re going to cross 200,000, and we still won’t be done.”
The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University reports more than 113,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19 as of Thursday.
Jha’s predictions far exceeds the estimates suggested by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model, often cited by numerous officials including the White House.
The University of Washington model is projecting 169,890 by Oct.1, according to the Daily Mail, which included a graphic that showed a clear downward trend in deaths per day.
'If the U.S. is unable to check the growth in September, we could be facing worsening trends in October, November, and the following months if the pandemic, as we expect, follows pneumonia seasonality,' IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray told CNN.
“We don't have to live with hundreds of thousands of Americans dying,” Jha said. “We do have to get people to wear masks. We do have to do as much social distancing as possible.”
Johnson & Johnson expects to begin clinical trials of a vaccine next month, according to reports.
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