US Could See A ’Very Deadly December’ With Tens of Thousands of Coronavirus Deaths to Come

By Staff, CNN

An influential model is predicting a catastrophic winter in the United States with a significant rise in coronavirus deaths.

A possible scenario sees 415,090 Covid-19 deaths by January, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation [IHME] at the University of Washington said in its latest forecast. The worst-case scenario is 600,000 deaths by January 1.

"When we look ahead into the winter with seasonality kicking in, people becoming clearly less vigilant, you know mask use is down, mobility is up in the nation, you put all those together and we look like we're going to have a very deadly December ahead of us in terms of toll of coronavirus," IHME director Dr. Christopher Murray told CNN's Anderson Cooper.

The IHME model is essentially predicting the number of deaths will double in the next four months. As of Friday, nearly 6.4 million infections have been recorded in the US and more than 192,000 Americans have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Despite the dire prediction, US President Donald Trump claimed the US has done "really well" in fighting the virus, according to a Thursday video on the White House official Facebook page.

"I really do believe we're rounding the corner and the vaccines are right there, but not even discussing vaccines and not discussing therapeutics, we're rounding the corner," Trump said.

Speaking with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Friday, the US top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said he does not agree with Trump’s statements.

"We're plateauing at around 40,000 cases a day, and the deaths of around 1,000," said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

He said test positivity is increasing in some regions of the country and people are spending more time indoors because of cooler weather.

"That's not good for a respiratory-borne virus," he said. "You don't want to start off already with a baseline that's so high."