IHME | New COVID-19 Projections (May 14, 2021)

IHME Professor and COVID-19 modeler, Dr. Ali Mokdad, shares insights from the latest COVID-19 model run. Explore the latest forecasts: https://covid19.healthdata.org/​​ and view the latest updates here: http://bit.ly/IHME-Episodes​ Dr. Ali Mokdad is in for Dr. Christopher Murray this week. IHME is projecting about 9.2 million deaths globally by September 1. Cases globally are declining but mortality is stagnant. Still, the detection rate of COVID-19 infections is still very low, about 7% globally. Based on the seroprevalence surveys that we track at IHME, we estimate about 24% of the public have been infected so it means that many people are still susceptible out there. Effective R is above 1 in 63 countries indicating that cases will increase in the coming weeks in these locations. In India, cases are coming down. Mortality peaked and is also starting to come down. This isn't true for every state in India, but at the national level, mortality and cases are declining. The next phase of the pandemic will be determined by three main factors: 1. Vaccines, and how fast countries can vaccinate their populations given the worldwide vaccine shortage and how well they can deal with vaccine hesitancy, which is still high in many countries 2. Seasonality is still high in the Southern Hemisphere where variants like P.1 are circulating. Cases will likely increase in this part of the world, and it will be incumbent on social distancing measures to help prevent transmission. 3. Spread of B.1.617, a variant first identified in India. We're seeing reports that this new escape variant is circulating in the UK and Mexico, and how countries are able to handle it in their own communities with travel restrictions. To control the pandemic, strategies remain the same: social distancing mandates, mask-wearing, and rolling out the vaccine as soon as possible. In the United States, we project 947,000 cumulative deaths by September 1. This represents an additional 35,000 deaths from May 10 – September 1. We are expecting that daily deaths will keep declining through September 1. The epidemic continues to decline in the US with the exception of three states where we are seeing evidence of stagnant or slightly increasing transmission. Those states are Alabama, Montana, and New Mexico. These declines in the United States are due to a combination of vaccination rates and declining seasonality. B.1.1.7 remains the dominant variant circulating in the United States right now but there are evidence of sustained increases and the prevalence of the escape variants B.1.351, B.1.617 and P1. Vaccinations continue declining as the U.S. approaches the limit of the adults who are willing to take the vaccine, giving the threat of escape variants – especially later in the year due to seasonality. Every effort should be made right now to increase vaccination. Mask-use in the vaccination continues declining, and we expect with the new CDC guideline on mask-use indoors for vaccinated people, that mask-use will drop more drastically in the United States than what we have assumed in our models and we will adjust for that in our future release. Our reference scenario and our worse scenario do suggest that infection will increase in July and August in the US, although mortality will not increase, but we will start seeing a rise in cases. So basically we are not out of danger simply because of future seasonality in the winter and the arrival of the new variants. This video, and clips of it, are free to use on blogs, news programs, and elsewhere. Please write to [email protected] with a link to your publication.