Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading US government infectious disease expert, offered a grim prediction on Sunday: the coronavirus could kill as many as 200,000 Americans.
“I mean, looking at what we’re seeing now, I would say between 100,000 and 200,000 … deaths,” Fauci told CNN’s State of the Union, though he added: “I just don’t think that we really need to make a projection, when it’s such a moving target that you can so easily be wrong and mislead people.”
According to
researchers at Johns Hopkins University, by Sunday morning the US had confirmed nearly 125,000 cases of Covid-19, a respiratory illness especially dangerous to older people and those with health problems, and 2,188 deaths. In New York, the state worst hit, Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday announced a death toll of 965, 237 up on the figure the day before.