U.S. Records Second-Lowest Number Of New COVID-19 Deaths Since July — But Fauci Says It’s All Still Terrible

Deaths from COVID-19 dropped to its second lowest daily number since July on Sunday, with just 378 fatalities, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

“New daily cases of coronavirus have steadily declined since the July peak, when more than 77,000 new infections were recorded in a single day,” The Daily Mail reported. “Yesterday saw 55 percent fewer new cases compared to the  summer’s peak and, while there have been spikes here and there, the trend since July has indisputably been a downward one.”

The numbers of deaths has been dropping steadily since the numbers rose a bit in a small spike in August. But to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the numbers are still alarming.

Fauci, an immunologist and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who serves on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, says things won’t be normal again for months.

“We need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it’s not going to be easy,” Fauci said during a discussion with doctors from Harvard Medical School.

“I keep looking at that curve, and I get more depressed and more depressed about the fact that we never really get down to the baseline that I’d like,” he said. “What I would like to see is keeping the lid on it, keeping the baseline down, until we get a vaccine. I think that’s the thing that turns it around.”

Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),  also raised red flags, despite the falling numbers. In a WebMD interview on Wednesday, he said Americans should brace for “the worst fall, from a public health perspective, we’ve ever had.”

“We’re going to have COVID in the fall, and we’re going to have flu in the fall. And either one of those by themselves can stress certain hospital systems,” Redfield said.

Meanwhile, “modelers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) now  predict that the US coronavirus death toll will reach 415,000 by January 1. If restrictions to slow the spread are eased, fatalities could climb to 600,000,” The Mail reported.

‘When we look ahead into the winter with seasonality kicking in, people becoming clearly less vigilant, you know mask use is down, mobility is up in the nation, you put all those together and we look like we’re going to have a very deadly December ahead of us in terms of toll of coronavirus,’ IHME director Dr Christopher Murray told CNN on Friday.