U.S. Deaths From Covid-19 Forecast to Hit 180,000 by October

(Bloomberg) -- America is on track to lose 180,000 lives to coronavirus by the start of October, according to new data from experts modeling the pandemic at the University of Washington in Seattle, though an embrace of masks could decrease the damage.

The forecast from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is a reduction from a projection of 201,129 deaths from the middle of June, and is predicated on the expectation that the outbreak will start to pick up in late August and intensify further in September, with 179,106 deaths by Oct. 1.

U.S. deaths from coronavirus reached 121,662 on Wednesday, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News.

The drop in projected deaths is tied in part to the fact that more younger patients are being diagnosed with coronavirus infections, and they are more likely to recover from them, said IHME Director Christopher Murray.

If more than 95% of Americans start regularly wearing masks in public, that number would drop to 146,047 deaths, the forecasters said.

“It remains to be seen how this will unfold over the next few weeks,” Murray said. “If transmission continues to go up, we may see increasing infections in at-risk populations.”

The model also assumes that states will once again impose social-distancing rules once 8 people are dying for every 1 million people in a given population, the officials said.

Only Texas and Florida are expected to hit those levels before October 1.

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