Americans should be prepared for 1-2 lakh COVID-19 deaths

The Donald Trump administration revealed for the first time multiple predictive models that are being used to estimate its grim assessment of a 100,000-200,000 coronavirus death toll in the country and stressed that community adherence to social distancing guidelines will be the game changer that will flatten the curve.

"There's no magic bullet. There's no magic vaccine or therapy. It's just behaviours. Each of our behaviours, translating into something that changes the course of this viral pandemic over the next 30 days," Dr Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response co-ordinator, said at a briefing on Tuesday.

"Americans should be prepared for that (death toll). Yes, it is a projection but that's what it is and we have to be prepared for that," America's top infectious diseases doctor Dr. Anthony Fauci said at the same briefing headlining charts that have guided Trump administration's decision to extend social distancing guidelines until April 30. The first phase of the 15-day stay-at-home guidelines came on March 16.

This is the thing that we must anticipate," Fauci said pointing to the peak death toll projections, "but we don't want to accept that is what will happen."

"We can influence this to the maximum degree."

In all of the graphs, New York and New Jersey are the standout lines, inching sharply upwards as the rest of the states cluster closer to the X-axis.

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