‘A story of darkness and light’: As US nears 300,000 COVID-19 deaths, vaccines bring hope for better days – By Jorge L. Ortiz (USA Today) / Dec 14 2020
As the USA approaches the once-unthinkable threshold of 300,000 COVID-19 deaths Sunday, experts fear the country is hurtling nonstop toward the next milestone of surpassing the total of American fatalities in World War II – even as vaccines are on the way.
A weeks-long surge in coronavirus transmission, leading to an average of more than 210,000 new infections and nearly 2,500 deaths a day this month, has public health experts considering the next major round number practically inevitable. According to Johns Hopkins University data, the USA had recorded more than 299,000 coronavirus deaths as of 5 a.m. EST on Monday.
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned the country could reach 450,000 fatalities before Feb. 1, days short of the one-year anniversary of the first known COVID-19 death in the USA.
The influential model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts more than 460,000 deaths by March 1, with or without the planned rapid vaccine rollout. By comparison, about 405,000 American service members perished in World War II over nearly four years.
“The way the number of infections has been growing so fast, it’s hard to believe we won’t be at half a million deaths,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, a professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California-Berkeley who in late August predicted the current spike. He expects cases, hospitalizations and deaths to continue climbing until late January.
