Influential coronavirus model predicts US deaths may stop by summer
Dr. Christopher Murray, IHME director, weighs in on ‘America’s Newsroom.’
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An influential coronavirus pandemic model often used by the White House task force will "probably" be revised later on Thursday to project fewer coronavirus deaths, said Dr. Christopher Murray.
Murray, who helps create the model from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, told “America’s Newsroom” anchor Ed Henry why the current projection of 68,000 deaths by August will be lowered.
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“It’s a little bit like forecasting the weather,” he said.
"We try to take into account all the data that is coming in from all the states and so all of our numbers are going to be revised as we see progress faster or slower. But, overall, we think that the general trend that we’ve seen since the beginning is a range between 40,000 to 150,000 deaths being where we’ll fallout for the country come June.”
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Murray’s comments came after Dr. Ali Mokdad, the physician behind the influential coronavirus pandemic model at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, told Fox News last Friday that "the worst is behind us as a country."
"We are going to go down in terms of mortality," Mokdad told a special edition of "Bill Hemmer Reports."
"Some states will peak a little bit later but California, [Washington], New York are going to go down in terms of numbers of mortality. It's very positive as we move forward that the worst is behind us as a country. For some states, it will take a week or so."
Murray said that there are two factors driving the forecasts.
“Some places like New York are staying sort of at the peak for many days in a row instead of coming off the peak, so we’re taking that into account,” Murray said.
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Murray also cited “mobility data” from various groups, including Google, showing southern states implementing “more social distancing than expected," which has helped their forecasts for a lesser spread of the virus.
“And that may be having a benefit and so we may see smaller numbers [of deaths] for a number of the states in the South.”
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