The US death toll due to COVID-19 surpassed 80,000 today, according to a tracker maintained by The New York Times. At least 1,346,800 cases have been confirmed in the country, including 80,095 deaths.The death toll has already surpassed the most optimistic epidemiologic model, the one produced by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and touted by the White House, which projected 64,000 deaths by Aug 1.
That model has since been adjusted to take into account the easing of social distancing measures, and now projects 137,000 US deaths by Aug 1.The United States has the most reported deaths and cases of the novel coronavirus, which was first reported in Wuhan, China in December of 2019, in the world.New