CDC predicts up to 282,000 COVID-19 deaths in US by December as virus continues to spread

The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has predicted that there would be 2,60,000 to 282,000 COVID-19 deaths by December 5. The fatality toll currently stands at 242,430 with over 10,554,805 people infected across the American territory, latest toll by John Hopkins University revealed. Unlike others, the CDC ensemble forecast is based upon a group of individual forecasts that the CDC received previously.

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"This week’s national ensemble forecast predicts that the number of newly reported COVID-19 deaths will likely increase over the next four weeks, with 5,500 to 13,400 new deaths likely to be reported in the week ending December 5, 2020. The national ensemble predicts that a total of 260,000 to 282,000 COVID-19 deaths will be reported by this date," CDC wrote in a statement. 

Meanwhile, another forecast made by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine predicted a total of 438,941 deaths by March 1. But, it added that if states relax restrictions and mask mandates, deaths could hit a staggering 587,000 by the same time.

Rising Hospitalisation 

These prediction models come as both the hospitalization rate and deaths across the country are rising at an alarming rate. According to the US government's Covid Tracking Project, there were 67,096 current hospitalizations reported on November 12, across the entire United States, making it the third consecutive day that that nation has topped 60,000 current hospitalizations.

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This comes as a recent study claimed that the reopening of gyms, restaurants and hotels carry the highest danger of spreading COVID-19 and could eventually lead to more deaths. As a part of the study which was published in the journal Science, the researchers analyzed the movement data from 98 million people to model the risk of infections at different locations. The research comes a deadly virus has already infected 52,129,134 people and the contagion is still spreading fast.

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Image: AP