How coronavirus control measures could affect its global death toll
When the U.S. White House coronavirus task force announced that social distancing needed to continue through April, it cited a stark death toll: As many as 240,000 Americans could die from COVID-19 even with efforts to mitigate its spread. As horrific as those numbers are, it could be a lot worse. In the first global assessment of the impact of the coronavirus, researchers at Imperial College London estimate that if governments weren’t taking any actions, the coronavirus would infect an estimated 7 billion people in 2020, nearly 90 percent of people on Earth. Roughly 40 million would die and no health-care system anywhere would be able to keep up. Already, countries are curbing that worst-case scenario, racing to implement strategies to drastically reduce the rapid growth of new cases (SN: 3/13/20). Even so, the virus could hit various countries differently, depending on their demographics and income levels, the new study suggests. And delays to put such strategies in place may put millions of...