One of the more hotly disputed aspects of the coronavirus pandemic has been the death toll that has resulted.  A huge number of column inches and airtime has been devoted to trawling over the daily statistics, with commentators breathlessly comparing nations to try and understand how their country is performing.

The British Chief Medical Officer Chris Witty recently bemoaned such attempts due to the vagaries of how countries were measuring the death tolls.  Some would count hospital deaths only, some would count those in care facilities.  A lack of standard measure has made drawing international comparisons difficult.

New research from Rutgers University attempts to help, by constructing a mathematical model that they believe provides an accurate estimate of the total number of deaths caused by COVID-19 in the United States.  It’s a model that the researchers believe could be applied around the world with great effect.

A hefty toll

“Based on data available on April 28, the model showed that the COVID-19 pandemic might be over in the United States, meaning no more American deaths, by around late June 2020,” the researchers say. “But if testing and contact tracing strategies, social-distancing policies, reopening of community strategies or stay-at-home policies change significantly in the coming days and weeks, the predicted death toll will also change.”

The model estimates that the final death toll in the United States will reach around 68,120, with a 99% confidence that the final figure will be between 66,055 and 70,304.

When the model was tested against reported deaths, it appears to match them closely, although it does clearly suggest that the virus will be tackled in a single wave, with no return once deaths are reduced to very low figures.  That seems somewhat unrealistic given that no effective vaccine for the virus is likely until the end of 2020 at the earliest.

Nonetheless, the researchers plan to apply their model to other countries, and they are confident that it can provide an accurate estimation of population mortality for the virus.