New York: The total death toll in the US from the novel coronavirus pandemic could hit the grim figure of 200,000 by September and expecting a dramatic decrease in COVID-19 cases in the country will be a “wishful thinking , an eminent Indian-American professor has warned.
Ashish Jha, the head of Harvard’s Global Health Institute, told CNN on Wednesday that he is not trying to scare people to stay at home rather urged everyone to wear masks, adhere to the social distancing rules and called for ramping up testing and tracing infrastructure.
Anybody who’s expecting a dramatic decrease in cases is almost surely engaging in wishful thinking. And if it (COVID numbers) stays just flat for the next three months, we’re going to hit 200,000 deaths sometime in September and that is just awful, Jha said.
Jha said the 200,000 death toll is not just a guess . Currently 800-1000 people are dying daily in America from the virus and all data suggest that the situation is going to get worse.
We’re gonna have increases, but even if we assume that it’s going to be flat all summer, that nothing is going to get worse… even if we pick that low number of 800 a day, that is 25,000 (deaths) a month in three and a half months. We’re going to add another 88,000 people and we will hit 200,000 sometime in September, Jha said.
US is by far the hardest-hit country in the global pandemic, in terms of both confirmed infections and deaths. (PTI)
