by Xinhua writer Tan Jingjing
WASHINGTON, April 1 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 mitigation efforts, if continued efficiently, may help reduce the large number of deaths the infectious disease is projected to cause in the United States, leading U.S. experts told Xinhua on Wednesday.
At a White House briefing on Tuesday, Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Deborah Birx, director of the White House COVID-19 task force, called the projected 100,000 to 240,000 deaths a "real number," pledging to try to reduce it.
As dire as those predictions are, both Fauci and Birx said the number of deaths could be much higher if Americans did not follow the strict guidelines vital to keeping the virus from spreading.
The White House models they displayed at the briefing showed that more than 2.2 million people could have died in the United States if nothing were done.
Those conclusions were based on a continuing analysis of cases in the United States, and generally matched those from similar models created by public health researchers around the globe, according to experts.
"This is the worst-case scenario, and we hope that it does not happen," Stanley Perlman, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa, told Xinhua.
"Social distancing and as much self-quarantining as possible seems to be the best way to mitigate the disease," he said.
Addressing the White House briefing on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump warned everyone in the nation will be facing a "very very rough two weeks" in the coronavirus pandemic, urging Americans to continue social-distancing measures.
He announced on Sunday the federal social distancing guidelines will be extended to April 30.
While enhancing the mitigation efforts, the United States is also stepping up the development of treatments for COVID-19, including experimenting with the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine and blood-related therapies, and offering fast tests.
"These measures would help delay the peak of the epidemic, leaving more time for the U.S. medical system to prepare for the crisis, and prevent it from collapsing," Zhang Zuofeng, professor of epidemiology, and also associate dean for research at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Xinhua.
Kent Pinkerton, professor of pediatrics from the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis, said that based on the current stay-in-shelter and social distancing precautions being taken for much of the United States at this time, the projected death figure seems "unusually high."
"I am confident the current mitigation procedures being implemented, if followed, will clearly reduce this number," he told Xinhua.
"There's no magic bullet. There's no magic vaccine or therapy. It's just behaviors: Each of our behaviors translating into something that changes the course of this viral pandemic over the next 30 days," Birx said.
