The standard-setting University of Washington has lowered its estimate of U.S. novel coronavirus mortality by 1,640 deaths as Americans surpass expectations on social distancing.
The UW Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the predictive model relied upon by the White House, reduced its Monday estimate of 74,073 projected cumulative U.S. deaths by Aug. 4 to 72,433 in a late Wednesday update.
Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics at the institute, said Thursday that the decision to revise the projections downward after just two days was based on the institute’s monitoring of cell phone data showing that Americans are becoming more mobile as some states loosen their stay-at-home orders.
“We noticed an increase in mobility and we suspected that that would increase mortality,” Mr. Mokdad said on Fox News. “But what we are seeing in many states is that as mobility has increased, we noticed the [number of] expected deaths wasn’t as big as we expected.”
The institute concluded that people are doing a better-than-anticipated job of keeping their compatriots at a safe distance.
“So it seems Americans, as they are going out, they’re practicing social distancing,” said Mr. Mokdad, who has a Ph.D. in quantitative epidemiology. “So we’re counting how many people are moving about, but we’re not counting how well they’re moving about by keeping social distance.”
The latest revision still represents an increase from the April 22 estimate of 67,641 U.S. deaths, but a significant decrease from April 1, when the IHME predicted that 93,765 Americans would be killed in the first wave of the pandemic.
The institute has revised its mortality projections at least weekly as it updates its methodology and incorporates trends and data from across the nation and other countries moving along the coronavirus curve.
Despite the increase in mobility, Americans are doing their part reduce the circulation in spite of the economic cost. Truly heroic. 7/17
— Ali H. Mokdad (@AliHMokdad) April 30, 2020
Mr. Mokdad noted that the institute projected just 60,308 deaths on April 17, but the total has risen as states include presumed COVID-19 deaths to their totals.
“We’re counting more deaths because states are adding presumptive deaths, so we’ve changed the way we’re defining [that],” said Mr. Mokdad. “In my opinion, we were underestimating with that early on, and now we may be overestimating with that.”
Still, he said, “the worst is behind us.” The IHME said that the U.S. peak date for daily deaths was April 15 for the first coronavirus wave, although some states “may be experiencing their peaks now or in the coming weeks (e.g., Utah).”
“[M]any states are seeing daily COVID-19 deaths staying near peak levels for many days in a row and slow declines in the numbers of daily deaths,” said the IHME analysis.
The Trump administration will allow its social-distancing guidelines to expire Thursday, leaving the decision on when to lift restrictions to the states. At least a dozen states have moved to ease their social-distancing policies, as have nine countries in Europe.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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