U.S. Surpasses 150,000 Coronavirus Deaths, Far Eclipsing Projections

Weekly averages of reported deaths in the United States had fallen substantially since an early peak in mid-April, when the national death toll was driven largely by a catastrophic surge in New York State. But deaths began to climb again this month, and the nation is now reporting about 1,000 deaths a day.

The current toll is being felt much more widely across many states, especially in the South, while New York is down to reporting an average of 16 deaths a day. Nearly 2,200 deaths have been reported in the past week in Texas, the state with the highest recent death toll relative to its population, followed by Arizona and South Carolina. Florida broke its daily record again on Wednesday, reporting 216 fatalities and bringing the state’s overall total to 6,332.

“The mortality is going to march in lockstep with our transmission,” said Dr. Sarah Fortune, the chair of immunology and infectious diseases at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard.

Exactly what percentage of people who get the virus die from it is not yet clear. The World Health Organization’s chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, said last month that it was likely to be about 0.6 percent. If that rate proves accurate, it would mean a vast majority of infections in the United States have gone unreported.

Dr. Fortune estimated that a mortality rate of 0.5 percent of all coronavirus cases would be a “best-case scenario,” but that the death rate could range up to 2 percent of cases, depending on how much the virus reaches into the highest-risk environments, like nursing homes.

“We have to do better in terms of limiting transmission,” Dr. Fortune said. “We have this terrible death toll because we have done a lousy job at limiting transmission.”

How well Americans will adhere to measures meant to limit the spread of the virus has been one of the hardest things to predict, experts said, and may be partially to blame for the underestimates.