Dr Sanjay Gupta warns 200,000 US coronavirus deaths is an ‘optimistic’ prediction

Neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta has warned that 200,000 US coronavirus deaths is an ‘optimistic’ prediction unless the entire country adopts social distancing.  

Last Sunday, senior immunologist Anthony Fauci issued a cautious prediction that COVID-19 could claim 100,000 to 200,000 lives in the country. 

Around 80 percent of the population has been put under enforced social distancing measures to stop the spread of the disease, which has so far killed 5,139 and infected more than 216,000 people.

Dr Gupta, referencing Fauci’s modelling, said: ‘The people making these models said this is the basement now in terms of the projections, there’s potentially numbers that are much higher than this as well.

Dr Gupta, referencing Fauci’s modelling, said: ‘The people making these models said this is the basement now in terms of the projections, there’s potentially numbers that are much higher than this as well’

Last Sunday, senior immunologist Anthony Fauci issued a cautious prediction that COVID-19 could claim 100,000 to 200,000 lives in the country

Last Sunday, senior immunologist Anthony Fauci issued a cautious prediction that COVID-19 could claim 100,000 to 200,000 lives in the country

President Donald Trump warned Americans to brace for a 'hell of a bad two weeks' ahead as the White House projected there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the US even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained

President Donald Trump warned Americans to brace for a ‘hell of a bad two weeks’ ahead as the White House projected there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the US even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained 

‘They say if all these social distancing measures are in place and in place across the country til the end of May then we cans start to look at these pretty tragic numbers of deaths, 100,000 to 240,000 people. But there’s a lot of ifs in there and I think that’s the big concern.

‘We didn’t start these social distancing policies early, we stayed in the first second week of March, now they’re extended to April so they’re not really long enough. And there’s still a lot of places around the country that aren’t enacting these sort of policies.

‘So we’ll see what happens over the next couple of days, the model says by the end of this week the rest of the country has to get on board with these measures or the model starts to fall apart.’ 

President Donald Trump, who earlier had downplayed the pandemic’s impact, said Wednesday that ‘we’re going to have a couple of weeks, starting pretty much now, but especially a few days from now, that are going to be horrific.’ 

Four new states imposed stay-at-home directives yesterday n Wednesday in response to the coronavirus pandemic, putting over 80% of Americans under lockdown as the number of deaths in the United States nearly doubled in three days.

The governors of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Nevada yesterday instituted the strict stay-at-home directives, putting more than 80 percent of Americans under lockdown. 

View of the International Christian relief organization Samaritans Purse Emergency Field Hospital in Central Park across Fifth Avenue from Mt. Sinai Hospital on April 1

View of the International Christian relief organization Samaritans Purse Emergency Field Hospital in Central Park across Fifth Avenue from Mt. Sinai Hospital on April 1

Trump said he saw no need for the federal government to issue a nationwide decree, with 39 states and the District of Columbia now requiring residents to stay home except for essential outings to the doctor or grocery store.

He also told a White House briefing on Wednesday he was considering a plan to halt flights to coronavirus hot spots.

‘We’re certainly looking at it, but once you do that you really are clamping down on an industry that is desperately needed,’ Trump told a White House news briefing.

Such a plan might conceivably shut down traffic at airports in hard-hit New York, New Orleans and Detroit.

‘We’re looking at the whole thing,’ Trump said of curtailing domestic flights already greatly reduced as demand has fallen. 

A Pentagon official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said the U.S. Department of Defense was working to provide up to 100,000 body bags for use by civilian authorities in the coming weeks.

A COVID-19 patient arrives at a field hospital built by Christian humanitarian organization Samaritans Purse, Central Park, New York on Wednesday

A COVID-19 patient arrives at a field hospital built by Christian humanitarian organization Samaritans Purse, Central Park, New York on Wednesday

Since 2010, the flu has killed between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans a year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 1918-1919 flu pandemic killed 675,000 in the United States, according to the CDC.

New York state remained the epicenter of the outbreak, accounting for more than a third of the U.S. deaths. Governor Andrew Cuomo told police on Wednesday to enforce rules more aggressively for social distancing.

‘Young people must get this message, and they still have not gotten the message. You still see too many situations with too much density by young people,’ Cuomo, a Democrat, said in imposing rules to close playgrounds, swing sets, basketball courts and similar spaces.

‘How reckless and irresponsible and selfish for people not to do it on their own,’ Cuomo said. 

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference the city was contracting with hotels as part of a massive effort to add 65,000 additional hospital beds by the end of the month.

FEMA did not have a specific delivery date for the next 100,000 military-style remains pouches. Pictured, dead bodies are loaded onto a truck outside Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York on Tuesday

De Blasio, also a Democrat, said the city had arranged to add 10,000 beds at 20 hotels, which have lost most of their guests as travel has stopped.

‘This is going to be an epic process during the month of April to build out all that capacity,’ de Blasio said. ‘But this goal can be reached.’

California saw the number of coronavirus cases surge by roughly 1,300 over the day before to nearly 10,000 as Governor Gavin Newsom warned that even as stay-at-home policies appeared to be having some effect, the state would run out of intensive- care hospital beds equipped with ventilators within six weeks.

Newsom said California could still manage to ‘bend’ the state’s infection curve more, saving the need for additional beds, if residents were rigorous in staying home and avoiding contact with others.

‘We are in a completely different place than the state of New York and I hope we will continue to be, but we won’t unless people continue to practice physical distancing and do their part,’ the Democratic governor told a news conference in the state capital, Sacramento.

But Americans under lockdown and largely unable to work struggled with making ends meet as rent came due on Wednesday, the first day of the month.

In Oakland, California, Alfa Cristina Morales said she had been surviving on money saved for a U.S. citizenship application since losing her job at a coffee shop. Morales had sought unemployment benefits to support her two-year-old son.

‘We’re worried that it won’t be enough,’ she said.

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said a six-week-old baby had died from COVID-19, in what he called ‘a reminder that nobody is safe from this virus.’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told Fox News that Broward County would likely allow two cruise ships with coronavirus outbreaks carrying a total of 2,500 people to dock in Fort Lauderdale, despite his misgivings about potentially contagious foreign nationals.

‘We were concerned about a deluge into the hospitals, but I think it turns out that there will probably be some who need to go, but it’s very manageable and the local hospital system thinks that they can handle it,’ DeSantis, a Republican, told Fox.

At Fort Lauderdale, Floridians aboard the ships would be taken home and flights arranged for foreigners, he said.

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