The number of deaths in the US due to coronavirus is now expected to be less than the initial projections of between 100,000 and 200,000, the Trump administration's topmost infection disease expert said on Wednesday, attributing it to the strict implementation of social mitigation measures and ramping up of health facilities on a war footing over the last several weeks.
"As we continue to accumulate real data, you go back and modify the models," Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and the Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, told Fox News in an interview.
In a frightening warning last month, the top health expert had forecasted that the US will see 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from coronavirus.
Referring to his earlier projection, Fauci said, "As we're getting more data and seeing the positive effect of mitigation, those numbers are going to be downgraded."
By Wednesday over four lakh Americans had been infected by the deadly disease and 13,000 have died of it.
The United States has been the worst victim of the virus. New York, which accounts for more than 6,000 deaths and adjoining New Jersey with more than 1,500 deaths, have emerged as the epicentre of coronavirus in the US.
"The number of deaths on a given day continue to increase. At the same time, seemingly paradoxically but not, we're saying that we're starting to see some glimmers of hope because the deaths generally lag by a couple of weeks behind what's fueling the outbreak, namely the number of new cases and the number of hospitalizations," Fauci said.
"At the same time, as we're seeing an increase in death, like typically what we're seeing now from New York, over the last few days, there's been a stabilisation and a decrease in the hospitalisations, admissions to intensive care and the requirements for incubations...as we get further on, beyond this week, we should start to see the beginning of a turnaround, which is a good sign," he said.
Noting that it is very sobering to see the increase in deaths, he said last week the White House predicted that this would really be a bad week.
"And it is. It's going to be a bad week for deaths. But driving that and ahead of that is the fact that we're going to start to see the beginning of a turnaround. So we need to keep pushing on the mitigation strategies because there's no doubt that that's having a positive impact on the dynamics of the outbreak," Fauci said.
A COVID-19 vaccine, he said, has now gone into clinical trial very quickly, faster than ever.
"A couple of other candidates have now entered into a phase one safety trial. In all, you know, you look at how long it takes to show safety and immunogenicity and ultimately protection, it's going to take about a year to a year-and-a-half," Fauci said.
"If, in fact, there's still areas of outbreak throughout the world, and we can test the vaccine to show efficacy, we may be able to truncate that timeframe by a bit. But, if you want to do it correctly, it generally takes about a year to a year-and- a-half. And I mentioned that a few months ago, so it's more like a year to a third or fourth of a year," he said.
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