COVID-19 cases in US may double before Biden takes office: Study

With Inauguration Day for US President-elect Joe Biden still two months away, number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in country is likely to increase to 20 million by end of January, nearly doubling current level of 12 million cases, predicts a new study.

research, published in journal Scientific reports, applied a mamatical model which h accurately forecasted rate of COVID-19 growth over summer of 2020.

"One of key reasons for increased accuracy of this model over or COVID-19 forecasts is that this model accounts for fact that people live in interconnected social networks rar than interacting mostly with random groups of strangers," said study co-author Raphael Thomsen from Washington University in St. Louis in US.

"This allows model to forecast that growth will t continue at exponential rates for long periods of time, as classic COVID-19 forecasts predict," Thomsen said.

According to study, current social distancing reflects an approximate 60 per cent return to rmalcy, as compared with level of social distancing before pandemic.

If trends continue at current level of social distancing, model forecasts that US is likely to see 20 million cases before end of January 2021.

"Even small increases in social distancing can have a large effect on number of cases we observe in next two and a half months," Thomsen said.

"Going back to a 50 per cent return to rmalcy, which was aver level of distancing in early August, would likely result in 5 million fewer cases by end of January," he ded.

researchers said US could effectively squash out COVID-19 growth within a few weeks if country went back to levels of social distancing we experienced in April.

However, y caution that this is likely a conservative estimate due to increased testing and upcoming holidays.

"In our model, we assume that only 10 per cent of cases are ever diagsed, meaning that we will start to hit saturation," said Song Yao, ar co-author of study.

"However, more recently, testing has increased, and probably more like 25 per cent of cases are diagsed. In that case, total COVID cases would increase beyond 20 million in next few months unless we, as a society, eng in more social distancing," Yao said.

scientists believe upcoming holiday seasons in US will present a great deal of uncertainty to outlook of pandemic as people travel more at end of year.