WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd December, 2020) The US COVID-19 death toll could reach 450,000 before February, Robert Redfield, director of the nation's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Wednesday, raising by almost 200,000 current fatality numbers from the pandemic.
"Before we see February, (there) could be close to 450,000 Americans (that) have died from this virus," Redfield told a live-streamed event on the pandemic. "But that's not a fait accompli if the American public really embraces social distancing, wearing masks, not letting your guard down in family gatherings."
More than 13.7 million Americans were infected with the coronavirus since January and more than 271,000 have died of related complications, data tracked by the Johns Hopkins University showed.
"In the spring, we lost about a hundred thousand people and we lost another hundred thousand in the summer," Redfield said. "These are, you know, sacred lives that were lost as a consequence of this pandemic. We're potentially looking at, you know, another hundred fifty to two hundred thousand people before we get into February."
Redfield said one of the CDC's biggest concerns was having more than 80,000 people in hospitals across the country now from COVID-19 related complications, and that the health system could be overrun.
"As we sit here today, 90 percent of our hospitals in this nation are actually in what we call one of the hot zones (and) therefore at risk for increased hospitalization and potential to negatively impact hospital capacity," he said. "Ninety percent of all of our long-term care facilities are in what we call high-transmission zones. So we are at a very critical time right now in our ability to maintain the resilience of our health care system in the (coming) spring."
In recent weeks, US COVID-190 hospitalization hit daily rates of more than 100,000 as Americans moved around more freely after a brief lull in the pandemic's effects post-summer.
US airports screened 1.8 million passengers on the weekend of the November 26 Thanksgiving holiday, the highest since March, despite the CDC advising Americans not to travel for the occasion.
