In my last projection I noted that deaths that were probably COVID related had begun to be included in some trackers. This has become more widespread with most trackers including them The primary exception is The Covid Tracking Project which is focused on testing and confirmed cases. I’ll be following the herd and projecting numbers that include probable COVD deaths. However, this adds some extra uncertainty to the death projections as we haven’t had much time to see whether and how this may change the growth patterns.
With that said, here’s an idea of what the next 10 days may bring. Cases have continued to grow at about 29,000 cases per day over the last 5 days. I’m having to take a bit of a guess about the growth rate for deaths. I’m going to use 7.5%, but that may be off.
| Cases | Deaths | |
| Start | 772,215 | 41,160 |
| 4/20 | 801,963 | 44,247 |
| 4/21 | 831,711 | 47,566 |
| 4/22 | 861,459 | 51,133 |
| 4/23 | 891,207 | 54,968 |
| 4/24 | 920,955 | 59,091 |
| 4/25 | 950,703 | 63,522 |
| 4/26 | 980,451 | 68,286 |
| 4/27 | 1,010,199 | 73,408 |
| 4/28 | 1,039,947 | 78,914 |
| 4/29 | 1,069,695 | 84,832 |
This has us reaching 1 million cases by early next week along with more than 80,000 deaths.
Keep in mind that actual cases and actual deaths are much higher. Nobody really knows how much higher, and that includes me. Hopefully we will see some consensus on the research on this soon, but for now I haven’t seen a really solid estimate at the national level.