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COVID-19 Death Toll in US Nears 90,000 as More Americans Disapprove Trump’s Handling of Crisis

The death toll from the novel coronavirus in the United States surpassed 88,700 on Sunday, as more Americans say they think President Donald Trump is doing a “bad job” handling the coronavirus pandemic and don’t trust him to provide accurate data about the outbreak.

Nearly 88,750 patients have already died from the COVID-19 in the United States, Johns Hopkins University reported on Sunday, while the number of coronavirus cases has reached more than 1,467,800.

Concerns over the real death toll being possibly much higher than the official US government numbers have also been recently voiced in mainstream media like The Washington Post and The New York Times.

The United States faces the “darkest winter in modern history” unless leaders act decisively to prevent a rebound of the coronavirus, according to a government whistle-blower who alleges he was removed from his job for warning the administration to prepare for the pandemic.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield also tweeted on Friday the United States is heading toward more than 100,000 coronavirus deaths by June 1, with leading mortality forecasts still trending upward.

His assessment cited 12 different models tracked by his agency and marked the first time Redfield has explicitly addressed the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths, even as the administration of President Donald Trump turns its strategy toward reopening the economy.

Trump has falsely claimed the numbers surrounding coronavirus cases in the United States were “going down almost everywhere” — despite easily verifiable data showing an increase in new infections nationwide.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has also stated the real number of fatalities from the novel coronavirus in US is “almost certainly” even higher than the official death toll because of the likelihood that some deaths went unrecorded.

A newly revised coronavirus mortality model predicts nearly 135,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by early August, almost double previous projections, as social-distancing measures for quelling the virus pandemic are increasingly relaxed, researchers warned.

The United States is currently the nation hardest hit by the coronavirus, with the number of cases and deaths exceeding other nations by a very wide margin. The virus pandemic has had a profound impact on the US economy, which experienced its sharpest decline in over a decade in the first three months of 2020. The total number of first-time filings for unemployment insurance has climbed to over 36.0 million over the past seven weeks of the forced lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The US has lost at least 21.4 million jobs since the March jobs report, which only captured the start of the economic collapse driven by the pandemic. The unemployment rate has spiked to 14.7 percent as of April, the highest level since the Great Depression. The number of US workers laid off or fired by their employers rose to 11.4 million in March from roughly 1.8 million in February.

The White House had projected 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the United State from the coronavirus pandemic even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained. They suggest if no social distancing measures had been put in place across the country between 1.5 million to 2.2 million people would have died.

Globally, the death toll from the coronavirus has topped 311,800, on Sunday, with more than 4,637,000 people infected worldwide, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

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