Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, on Thursday said he does believe that coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S. will ultimately be lower than earlier projections of 100,000 to 240,000.
“I do,” Dr. Fauci said on NBC’s “Today” show, saying the American people have done a “terrific job” with buckling down and adhering to social distancing guidelines.
“The real data are telling us that it is highly likely that we’re having a definite positive effect by this mitigation,” said Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “I believe we are going to see a downturn in that, and it looks more like the 60,000 than the 100 [thousand] to 200,000.”
A model run by the University of Washington recently projected that there would be roughly 60,000 deaths in the U.S. by early August — a sharp downward revision from its previous estimates.
He cautioned that it isn’t a time to pull back from measures such as physical separation.
Dr. Fauci dismissed the notion that the number of coronavirus-related deaths is being inflated because some people are dying from other causes, but he acknowledged that there could be an undercounting.
“I think there’s more of a chance of missing some that are really coronavirus deaths that are not being counted, but I don’t think that number is significant enough to really substantially modify the trends that we’re seeing at all,” he said.
There are more than 432,000 coronavirus cases and more than 14,800 coronavirus-related deaths, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University. It’s estimated that more than 24,000 people in the country have recovered.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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