U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Projected to Pass 100,000 by June 1, CDC Director Says

Although many states are beginning to reopen and hope to gradually be able to return to normal life, coronavirus mortalities in the United States show no signs of stopping.

Centers for Disease Control and Protection Director Robert Redfield said on Friday that current forecasts predict that by June 1, there will be over 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 related illness in the country.

With two weeks to go before the start of June, as of Monday, there have been at least 89,504 coronavirus-related deaths in the country and just under 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases.

The CDC’s national weekly forecasting includes 12 individual forecasts, all of which indicate that in the coming 4 weeks, there will be an increase in the amount of deaths, although rates vary.

Meanwhile state-level forecasts “indicate that states with low numbers of deaths reported to date are not likely to see a rapid rise in the coming weeks, while states with high numbers of deaths reported to date are likely to see substantial increases.”

Different models are also based on different assumptions about social distancing measures, the CDC notes on their website.

Earlier this month, White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx said that up to 240,000 Americans could die from the COVID-19 outbreak.

"Our projections have always been between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives lost, and that's with full mitigation and us learning from each other of how to social distance," Birx told Fox News.

The numbers were on par with an earlier estimation from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which estimated in late March that 100,000 to 200,000 Americans would die by the end of the summer, and that the peak number of deaths would come in the middle of April.

With the majority of states around the country already beginning to reopen, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases, has warned that moving too hastily will result in a rise of new cases and deaths.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that when you pull back mitigation, you’re going to start seeing cases crop up here and there,” Fauci said during a recent CNN interview. “If you’re not able to handle them, you’re going to see another peak, a spike, and then you almost have to turn the clock back to go back to mitigation.”

“I keep trying to articulate to the public and to the leaders, ‘Take a look at the guidelines,’ ” he added, referencing White House guidelines for reopening. “They don’t tell you because you’ve reached the end of the 30-day mitigation period that, all of a sudden, you switch a light on and you just go for it. That’s not the way to do it. Each state, each city, each region is going to be a little different.”

As of Monday, coronavirus cases are on the rise in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia and Wyoming, according to The New York Times. With the exception of Michigan, all of those states have begun to reopen. Nationwide, the amount of deaths per day has been on the decline, and 844 new deaths were reported on May 17.

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