The total number of coronavirus deaths in the United States totaled 112,754 on Wednesday (Reuters | File)
The United States could see 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus at some point in September, said a leading expert, while the total number of cases of coronavirus in the United States exceeded 2 million Wednesday as governments relax restrictions.
Ashish Jha, director of the Global Health Institute at Harvard, told CNN in an interview on Wednesday that without drastic action, the death toll in the United States would continue to rise.
“Even if we don’t have an increasing number of cases, even if we keep things flat, it’s reasonable to expect that we will kill 200,000 people in September,” said Jha. “And it is only until September. The pandemic will not be finished in September.”
Jha added, “I’m really worried about where we are going to be in the weeks and months to come.”
The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in the United States on Wednesday was 112,754, the highest in the world. Jha said it was directly related to the fact that the United States was the only large country to reopen without its case growth reaching a controlled level – a rate of people testing positive for the coronavirus remaining at 5% or less for at least 14 days.
He said the deaths were not “something we have to get out of” and could be prevented by stepping up testing and contact tracing, strict social distancing and widespread use of masks.
Several US states have seen coronavirus cases surge in recent days, which worries Jha and other experts who say the authorities are easing the restrictions too soon.
New Mexico, Utah and Arizona each saw their case numbers increase by 40% for the week ended Sunday, according to Reuters analysis. Florida and Arkansas are other hot spots.
Nationally, new infections are increasing slightly after five weeks of decline, according to a Reuters analysis which showed a total of 2,003,038 cases.
Part of the increase is due to more tests, which hit a record high last Friday of 545,690 tests in a single day, but have since dropped, according to the COVID follow-up project https://covidtracking.com.
It is also likely that more people will move and resume certain commercial and social activities as the 50 states gradually reopen after blockages intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Health officials urged everyone who participated in national racial justice protests to be tested. Experts fear that the protests, without social distancing, which have occurred since the death of George Floyd on May 25 during police custody in Minneapolis, could lead to a new outbreak of the cases.
But Vice President Mike Pence said he saw no signs of it.
“What I can tell you is that at this point we don’t see an increase in new cases now, almost two weeks after the start of the first protests,” Pence said in an interview with Fox Business. Network. “Many people at the protests wore masks and engaged in social distancing.”
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas; Additional reporting by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Peter Cooney)
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
