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COVID-19 could kill 618,523 by August in US

A woman receives her first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from a health care worker at a clinic targeting minority community members at St. Patrick's Catholic Church on April 9, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by AFP)

A new mathematical model of how infectious diseases progress has projected that COVID-19 could kill 618,523 in the United States by August, but wearing masks could save 14,000.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington forecast that another 618,523 could die from COVID-19 by August 1 under its current projection with vaccine distribution scaled up over 90 days.

However, if 95 percent of people in the United States wore masks, deaths could drop to 604,366 by August, according to the IHME model.

Meanwhile, in a worst-case scenario, in which fully vaccinated people return to pre-pandemic levels of mobility, COVID-19 could take the lives as many as 697,573 people by August.

COVID-19 has infected over 31 million people to date, killing 561,074 people in the United States, Johns Hopkins reported.

US COVID-19 cases is double the number in any other country worldwide, and the country has the highest death toll of any country.

So far, 178.8 million vaccine doses were distributed in the 50 states across the US with nearly 35% of the population receiving one dose and 20.5% fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg's COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker.

Meanwhile, one-fourth of the US population has rejected the COVID-19 vaccines.

A recent poll by Monmouth University showed that despite the unprecedented fatalities in the US, 25 percent of the population said they were unwilling to be vaccinated.

"Most Americans feel that 'normal' is still many months away," said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute that conducted the survey.

 


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