US may see 200,000 coronavirus deaths in September, says expert

The United States could see over 2,00,000 coronavirus deaths by the end of September, a leading health expert said while talking to the media. The United States on June 10 became the first nation in the world to register over 2 million COVID-19 cases, while other countries have not even touched the 1 million mark. Dr. Ashish Jha, the head of Harvard's Global Health Institute, during an interview with CNN, said that drastic actions would be needed to control the coronavirus deaths in the country, otherwise it would just keep on rising.  

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Dr. Jha said that one of the things that the United States got wrong is opening the country when the cases were still on the surge. He said that no other majorly affected countries opened their economy this soon, they all did it when things looked under control. Dr. Jha further added that several states in the country have eased restrictions in the past few weeks, which have caused the coronavirus cases to rise steadily. Health experts, including Dr. Jha, also suspect that the ongoing protests against racial injustice in the United States could lead to another surge of COVID-19 cases in the country. 

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COVID-19 figures

According to figures by Johns Hopkins University, the United States has recorded 20,00,464 confirmed coronavirus cases so far, of which 1,12,924 people have lost their lives. New York remains the most affected state in the country where alone 30,458 people have died to date. New York is followed by New Jersey and Massachusets, where 12,303 and 7,408 people have diest respectively. Meanwhile, the world has logged in 7.3 million confirmed cases and over 4,16,000 deaths. 

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(Image Credit: AP)