WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd September, 2020) The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has alerted public health officials across the United States in all 50 states and five major cities that they should be ready to start distributing a new COVID-19 vaccine by late October or early November, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
The CDC based in Atlanta sent out the alert in documents on August 27, the same day that President Donald Trump told the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina that a vaccine might be available to the US public before the end of this year, the report said.
A forecasting model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington released on Wednesday predicted that the US COVID-19 death toll would exceed 260,000 by Election Day on November 3.
The IHME model also predicted more than 317,000 total COVID-19 deaths in the United States by December 1. However, that figure would drop to around 250,000 if 95 percent of Americans wore face masks when leaving their homes, the institute said.
As of Wednesday, the United States had recorded 184,914 deaths from COVID-19 and 6,094,562 cases overall, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
