The number of fatalities from COVID-19 pandemic may be dramatically less than projected in Ohio and across the nation, it was reported Thursday.
Both Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, attributed the lower numbers to safety measures such as social distancing,which involved the closing of schools, gyms, bars, restaurants and the cancellation of major professional and college sporting events last month in an attempt to slow the virus.
U.S. fatalities from Covid-19 may be as low as 60,000 — half that of earlier projections.
In Ohio, data shows new daily cases are now expected to peak April 19 at 1,607. That’s down from a worst-case scenario that projected 10,000 new cases per day.
“It is highly likely we are having a definite positive effect by the mitigation things that we’re doing, this physical separation,” said Fauci. “It looks more like the 60,000, than the 100,000 to 200,000” projected fatalities, he said.
Deborah Birx, the top public health official coordinating the White House’s coronavirus task force, projected March 31 that as many as 240,000 Americans could die as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, even with another 30 days of the most stringent public health restrictions.
That analysis caused President Donald Trump to retreat from ambitions to urge Americans back to work by Easter.
DeWine said he was optimistic and “very happy with where we are at this point.”
“We have tried every day to tell you what we know when we know it. We’ve had some questions about the curve and how much it was flattened,” DeWine said. “We’re seeing some of these estimates changing. You’re seeing the estimates getting better, but we also have Ohioans dying every day.”
The only way for Ohio to get back to normal is by continuing to do what they’ve been doing and that’s by staying home, DeWine said. The governor said the state is working on a “sophisticated plan” to slowly return the state to normal but that details were not yet ready to be shared.
Dr. Amy Acton, director of the Ohio Department of Health, said that a lack of testing continues to be problematic.
Around 55,000 Ohioans have been tested for the virus. That means around 10% percent of people tested for COVID-19 in Ohio had the disease.
There were 213 Ohioans who had died form COVID-19 as of Thursday, a 10.3% increase from the 193 deaths reported Wednesday.
As of Thursday there were 1,612 Ohioans who had been hospitalized for the virus, including 497 who were admitted to intensive care units, according to the state.
Separately, Fauci told CBS on Thursday that he sees the U.S. making progress toward normalization in the near future, as the April 30 end of the currently mandated social-distancing period approaches.
“Hopefully, by the time we get to the summer, we will have taken many steps in that direction,” he said.
Fauci’s comments were tempered by two other news reports:
• New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday said a “breathtaking” record 799 people died in New York state from coronavirus in one day and warned against underestimating the killer pandemic.
• In the fastest surge of layoffs and economic decline in U.S. history, nearly 17 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits in the last three weeks, the government reported Thursday. Given the speed with which the numbers are rising, unemployment could ultimately reach levels seen only once before in almost 100 years _ the Great Depression of the 1930s, when one out of four workers were jobless.
Cuomo said the the new spike in deaths has pushed the total statewide toll over 7,000, about half the national total. “It’s so shocking, breathtaking. I don’t even have words for it, the governor said.”
The governor said the pandemic has now far eclipsed the horror of 9/11 — and admitted that he never thought any New Yorker would experience such mass death in a generation.
Economists at the Economic Policy Institute said. the jobless claims filed in the last three weeks are “a mind-boggling 2,500% increase over the pre-virus period,”
“For a benchmark, this is as if the entire adult population of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin applied for unemployment insurance in the last three weeks.”
President Donald Trump has talked about reopening the American economy relatively soon. The broad shutdown began in mid-March, and some businesses are beginning to prepare for the days when lockdown and stay-at-home orders are lifted.
But the sheer size and speed of the layoffs – coupled with evidence that the coronavirus is now spreading into rural areas and sections of the country that until now reported few cases – suggest that reversing the social distancing policy may still be some distance down the road.
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