Two senior health officials believe the coronavirus outbreak may kill fewer Americans than some recent projections, indicating tentative signs that the death toll was starting to level off in New York and other hot spots, Reuters reported.
US Surgeon General Jerome Adams said he agrees with the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that some research models predict overall mortality rates that may be too high, although none of them provide an alternative estimate.
The White House coronavirus task force predicted that the death toll from coronavirus in the US could reach 100,000 to 240,000. According to it, controlling deaths to that range is possible if strict measures of social distance are followed.
Adams said in an interview with ABC News on Tuesday that he was encouraged by recent data showing a possible “flattening” of the outbreak in some areas.
When asked if he believed that the death toll would be below the terrible forecast of the White House target group, Adams said, “that’s absolutely my expectation.”
“I feel a lot more optimistic, again, because I’m seeing mitigation work,” he said. According to him, he agreed with CDC director Robert Redfield that deaths could fall short of totals that some computer models showed.
The governors of New York, New Jersey, and Louisiana have indicated preliminary signs that the outbreak of the coronavirus may begin to go plateau, but warned of complacency.
The death toll from coronavirus in the United States has exceeded 10,000, and the number of confirmed cases has exceeded 367,000.
Redfield stated that social distancing was effective.
“If we just social distance, we will see this virus and this outbreak basically decline, decline, decline. And I think that’s what you’re seeing,” Redfield said. “I think you’re going to see the numbers are, in fact, going to be much less than what would have been predicted by the models.”
The University of Washington's research model, one of several cited by leading healthcare authorities, predicts that by August 4, the death toll from coronavirus in the US will be 7,766.
