U.S. stuck in "horrible plateau" of COVID-19 deaths: report

Pedestrians walk past a COVID-19 testing site on Times Square in New York, the United States, May 17, 2022. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

NEW YORK, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- The pace of COVID-19 deaths has remained relatively steady since May in the United States, despite an uptick in July to about 400 a day, USA Today reported on Wednesday.

"We're sitting on this horrible plateau," Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist with Pro Health Care in New York and a clinical instructor of medicine at Columbia University, was quoted as saying.

The number of COVID-19 deaths is similar to that of influenza deaths normally reported during peak season, the report said, citing David Dowdy, epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A bad flu season in the United States could see more than 50,000 deaths.

Spread over the course of a year, there would be about four times as many COVID-19 deaths as flu deaths, Dowdy said. ■