The COVID-19 Death Toll in the U.S. Crosses 200,000

According to a Johns Hopkins University tally, more than 200,000 people have now died of the COVID-19 in the United States since the start of the pandemic.

The death toll may increase due to a complicated flu season. In the next three months, around 150,000 people could lose their lives from Covid-19, according to a projection by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

“We’re entering into the fall and into the winter, and that means there’s going to be more indoor things than outdoor things,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday during the Atlantic Festival. “Going into that situation, I would like to have seen the baseline of where we are — the daily number of infections — come way, way down and not be stuck at around 30- to 40,000 per day.”

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told even after all those deaths and 6.9 million confirmed cases, more than 90% of Americans remain susceptible to the virus.

“CDC is in the process of a very large, sequential study across the entire United States, measuring serology,” Redfield told the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday. “The preliminary results on the first round show that a majority of our nation — more than 90% of the population — remains susceptible.”

Redfield also explained at the Senate hearing why a document posted to the CDC’s site that explained how coronavirus spreads was subsequently removed.

“There is going to be a technically reviewed document on this issue coming on the website,” Redfield said. “But the one that was posted on Friday was not technically reviewed, and as a consequence the career scientists at CDC took it down, put up the technically reviewed document, until the new technology review document can be posted.”