The U.S. coronavirus death toll surpassed 80,000 today as fatalities are predicted to hit 137,000 by August due to relaxed social distancing measures in the majority of states.
At least 80,726 Americans have died from the coronavirus and there are more than 1.3 million infections across the country.
The new death toll was reported around the same time a top coronavirus model revealed a projected American death toll of 137,000 by August.
The influential model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is projecting a slight increase in expected COVID-19 deaths as a result of increased mobility across the country.
Since the model’s predictions were updated this week, the projected death toll has increased by 2,700.
The slight increase comes as some states continue to ease social distancing measures and people start moving more following weeks of lockdowns.
The director of the institute that created the White House-endorsed coronavirus model says the moves by states to re-open businesses ‘will translate into more cases and deaths in 10 days from now’.
Dr Christopher Murray said states where cases and deaths are going up more than expected include California, Illinois, Arizona and Florida.
In California, deaths are projected to double by August to 6,000, according to the IHME model. It is an increase of 1,420 on its projections at the start of last week.
Another 88 deaths were recorded in California over the weekend, bringing the death toll in the state to 2,718. The total number of infections has now reached more than 67,800.
Despite the figures, Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles, the county with 40 per cent of the new cases, was packed with sun bathers on Sunday.
‘Some good-ish news coming out of New York and New Jersey and Michigan, where the death cases and death numbers are coming down faster than expected,’ Murray told CBS on Sunday.
‘Some other states where cases and deaths are going up more than we expected – Illinois and then Arizona, Florida, California as examples of that.’
Researchers said the increased numbers in these states were the result of ‘a combination of updated daily death and case data, recent actions to ease previously implemented social distancing measures, and steadily rising levels of mobility in many places’.
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Illinois are projected to have the five highest COVID-19 death tolls through August, the model forecasts.
Fewer deaths, however, are now expected in hard-hit New York and New Jersey.
New York, which currently has 21,000 deaths, is projected to have more than 31,000 deaths by August, according to the model.
In New Jersey, the model predicts more than 14,000 deaths by August. The state currently has more than 9,200 deaths.
The model’s latest findings show that, over the last few weeks, five states – Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Georgia – have seen at least a 20 per cent increase in mobility patterns.
Thirteen states have experienced between a 15 and 20 per cent increase: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
‘While at least some of these patterns may be related to formal easing of social distancing policies, this upward trend in movement began in several places long before state-level mandates were relaxed,’ Murray said.
‘Unless and until we see accelerated testing, contact tracing, isolating people who test positive, and widespread use of masks in public, there is a significant likelihood of new infections.’
California was among the first to go into lockdown with some of the strictest measures in the country and has now begun to open back up.
However, it should be noted that its easing of restrictions only began on Friday – too soon to have been picked up in the findings of the researchers.
‘The virus has not changed,’ LA county health director Barbara Ferrer told the Los Angeles Times. ‘It can still spread easily, and it can still result in serious illness and death.’