US coronavirus deaths will hit half a million in February, experts predict

Experts predict 500,000 Americans will probably be killed by Covid-19 before the end of February, and perhaps before, in an acceleration of deaths expected to crest in March.

The warning comes as an increasing number of experts see February and March as peak months for Covid-19 disease transmission in the US, with a more contagious variant circulating in most states and mass vaccination off to a slow start.

Related: 'An unmitigated disaster': America's year of Covid

“We have a combination of factors that allowed a very bad situation to get worse,” said Dr Steven Woolf, a population health expert and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The pattern of escalation in this winter surge has been under way for a while.”

At each inflection point, Woolf said, the United States had failed to respond effectively, beginning with reducing viral transmission before the fall when a winter surge was expected. That was followed by a failure to heed warnings against winter travel. Then, a failure to efficiently implement a mass vaccination campaign.

“Everyone is in agreement there is light at the end of the tunnel,” said Woolf. “Eventually, once we get the vaccination up to a certain level and we get to herd immunity, things are going to get better.”

However, to minimize loss of life now, Americans must double down on the same protective measures that have proved difficult, or impossible for some essential workers, in the past.

“There’s so many thousands of people who will die in the interim between now and when we achieve that sought-after moment in our country,” said Woolf.

A forecast assembled by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicts up to 477,000 people could die by 6 February. The possibility that the US could hit 500,000 deaths comes as mortality has accelerated amid a winter peak.

It took more than 16 weeks for the US to reach 100,000 deaths, but less than five weeks for the death toll to leap from 300,000 to 400,000. Many experts expect the US will reach 500,000 deaths in February.

Already, the stunning death toll has already reduced American life expectancy by the single largest drop in 40 years and made an infectious disease a leading cause of death for the first time in a century.

The increasing agreement that the US will see 500,000 deaths from Covid-19 is also one shared by the incoming Biden administration. Ron Klain, chief of staff to the incoming president, told CNN’s State of the Union he expected the pandemic to “get worse before it gets better”.

“I certainly expect we will hit 500,000 deaths sometime in the month of February,” said Klain. “People who are contracting the virus today will start to get sick next month, and will add to the death toll in late February, even March.”

“So, it’s going to take a while to turn this around,” Klain added.

In part, the increasing likelihood of tens of thousands more deaths is due to the impact of a more transmissible strain of Covid-19, called B117. The variant is already believed to be circulating in most US states.

While B117 is not believed to be deadlier than the current dominant strains of Covid-19, experts believe it could lead to more cases, and therefore more deaths. Already taxed hospitals could be swamped, thereby reducing quality of care. Scientists remain confident vaccines will still be effective against the new strain, and early studies have suggested the same.

If a mass vaccination campaign can get under way in earnest, health leaders such as the former CDC director Dr Tom Frieden predicted deaths will begin to decline by March, and “substantially decline” by June.

However, cases would still need to be traced by public health departments and isolated, as pressure placed on the virus by less readily available hosts could result in new strains.