Update, January 16: Note the exchange in the comments. The SCMP article cites a June 2020 article as having been published on January 8, 2021. So this post is very out date, and I'm happy to stand corrected.
Via the South China Morning Post, a very grim forecast: Coronavirus: global death toll could hit 5 million by March, Chinese researchers say. Excerpt:
A team of Chinese experts has warned that the global impact of the coronavirus pandemic could be worse this year than it was in 2020.
By the beginning of March, the death toll from Covid-19 could rise to 5 million – from just under 2 million on Thursday – according to figures calculated by a team from China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), People’s Liberation Army and public health research institutes.
The researchers, led by professor Xu Jianguo from the CDC, said in a study published on January 8 in the peer-reviewed [Chinese] journal Disease Surveillance that the Chinese government and the public should brace for more external shocks.
“The development of the pandemic is hard to foresee, but a numerical estimate by modelling can provide some useful information,” Xu said.
While China has largely brought Covid-19 under control, many countries are still dealing with widespread outbreaks partly driven by mutated strains. Some of the mutations are believed to have emerged in communities where herd immunity had already been established.
More than 92 million cases have been reported around the world, but that number could rise to 170 million in early March, with the United States likely to be the worst hit, according to Xu’s estimate.
In the worst case, the number of US cases could hit 32 million, or about 20 per cent of the world total. India, Brazil and Russia would be the next worst hit, with 15.5, 15 and 6 million cases respectively. WHO experts arrive in Wuhan to investigate coronavirus origins 15 Jan 2021 The researchers did not provide an estimate of the possible death toll in the four worst-hit countries and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Even in the best scenario – with governments implementing effective measures, people obeying rules such as social distancing and wearing masks, and massive vaccination programmes taking effect – the study said a further 300,000 people would die from Covid-19 by early March.
To achieve the best scenario the US would have to keep its cases at about 26 million, or no more than 3 million new infections in the intervening weeks, the study said. The US reported more than 1.7 million cases last week alone.
A researcher at the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai who is investigating the coronavirus but was not involved in the study, said that if 5 million people died by March, it could lead to the collapse of the global health care system.
“People die en masse when they cannot get even the most basic care in hospitals,” said the person, who asked not to be named.
The current global fatality rate of Covid-19 is 2.1 per cent, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University in the US. A rise in the death toll to 5 million would represent a death rate of 3 per cent, which was about the level in Wuhan when hospitals were overwhelmed by the then new disease.
