Earlier on Saturday, the US replaced Italy at the top of the coronavirus death toll chart, surpassing 20,000.
Saturday’s nationwide death toll is slightly lower than the one reported the day before. On Friday, the US became the first country in the world to report over 2,000 fatalities in a single day as the virus claimed 2,108 lives across the nation.
As the number of deaths due to the outbreak in the US keeps skyrocketing, it is widely believed that the country has either already hit its coronavirus peak, or that the worst is just around the corner.
When the US passes its peak, the daily death toll is projected to decline until the curve is ‘flattened’. According to the model, which was created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the US will not see any more deaths from the disease from mid-June, and by August, around 61,500 people will have died from Covid-19.
The outcome, however, could be much worse unless social distancing guidelines, reinforced by 30-day stay-at-home orders in some states, are extended further, according to the latest projections by the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Health and Human Services (HHS), as reported by the New York Times on Friday.
It is forecast that 200,000 Americans will fall victim to the virus if the restrictive measures, which have dealt a heavy blow to the US economy and have resulted in over 16 million Americans losing their jobs in just three weeks, are lifted by the end of April.