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COVID-19 will start killing about 3,000 Americans daily: Report

Tuesday, 05 May 2020 1:33 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 05 May 2020 1:48 PM ]

US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, wears a mask to protect himself and others from COVID-19, known as coronavirus, as he speaks to the press as the Senate returns into session at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, May 4, 2020. (AFP photo)

A sharp rise in the death toll from the novel coronavirus is expected in the United States as the President Donald Trump presses states to reopen the country.

The daily death toll will reach about 3,000 on June 1, according to a report cited by The New York Times.

Trump has been pressing for states to reopen their economies.

However, a private Trump administration projection as well as a public model both predicted a 70 percent increase from the current number of about 1,750 over the next several weeks as more businesses across the country reopen.

Both projections forecast about 200,000 new cases of coronavirus each day by the end of the current month of May, up about 8-times from the present 25,000 cases a day.

The latest projections reaffirm US medical experts' fears that an early reopening of the economy will put the nation back into the dire condition it was in mid-March.

Weeks ago the number of coronavirus cases were rising so rapidly in some parts of the US that COVID-19 patients were dying on gurneys in hospital hallways.

US milestone of 100,000 virus deaths likely by June

Trump

Nevertheless, about half of 50 US states have now begun reopening their economies despite warnings by the public health experts that this move could lead to a new wave of cases and deaths.

“The vast majority of Americans have not been exposed to the virus, there is not immunity, and the initial conditions that allowed this virus to spread really quickly across America haven’t really changed,” said Dr. Larry Chang, an infectious-diseases specialist at Johns Hopkins University.

The US coronavirus death toll is currently about 70,000 out of more than 250,000 people who have died across the globe from the virus.

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