(GRAPHICS): 45,435 Americans killed by coronavirus from 827,093 cases; 2,474 died within 24 hours

The United States’ daily coronavirus death toll is the highest it’s been in nearly a week after 2,474 people died from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the Daily Mail of UK has reported.

As of early Wednesday morning, 45,435 Americans have now been killed by coronavirus since the pandemic began ravaging the country last month.

Confirmed cases of the deadly illness also surged by 26,558 across Tuesday, bringing total US cases of COVID-19 up to 827,093.

As a result of the scary statistics, the main model used by the White House to estimate the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak has now increased its projection of expected deaths.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) now expects the national death toll to hit 65,976 by August – 5,561 more than previously forecast on April 9.

IHME’s model is constantly being fed new data and changes its forecast accordingly. It is the model which is used by the White House for forward planning.

The model had last month predicted there would be more than 90,000 deaths by August, but that number dropped to 82,000 on April 7, before decreasing by another 20,000 days later.

The drastic reduction signaled to experts at IHME that social distancing measures were working in the fightback against COVID-19.

But the model assumes that all states are implementing ‘broad, aggressive social distancing policies’, and may not have factored in any plans from states, such a Georgia and South Carolina, to ease social distancing measures early.

Georgia Governor, Brian Kemp, announced Monday that bowling alleys, salons, barbershops and a number of other indoor facilities that have been closed across Georgia since April 2 will be permitted to reopen this Friday – despite deaths and infections spiking in the state on Tuesday.

The death toll in the state has increased by 131 in 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities to 818. Infections also surged by more than 1,000, bringing the number of cases in the state up to 20,166.

The state’s timetable, which is one of the most aggressive in the US, allows gyms, hair salons, bowling alleys and tattoo parlors to reopen on Friday as long as owners follow strict social-distancing and hygiene requirements.

Elective medical procedures will also resume. By next Monday, movie theaters may resume selling tickets and restaurants limited to takeout orders could return to limited dine-in service.

Medical experts have warned that increased testing will be necessary for the lifting of stay-at-home measures, which experts say are essential to slowing the spread of the highly contagious respiratory illness.

However, the measures have ground the economy to a standstill and forced more than 22 million people to apply for unemployment benefits in the last month.

The US has by far the world’s largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases, almost four times as many infections as Spain, the country with the second-highest number. Globally, cases topped 2.5 million on Tuesday with North America accounting for one-third of all cases.

New reported US cases appear to be slowing this week, rising by less than 30,000 a day for the past three days.

Coronavirus-related fatalities in the US hit a peak of 2,806 on April 15, the deadliest single day of the epidemic.

Hot spots are still emerging, however, in Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia.

 

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