About 1,067 Tennesseans will die from coronavirus.
Tennessee won’t run short of hospital beds or ICU beds during the coronavirus pandemic and the state can expect to see 26 deaths per day until a peak of 35 deaths in one day on April 26th.
Those are projections released late last week by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine.
The numbers and the group are same ones name-checked in Sunday’s Rose Garden virus update by Debbie Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force. Birx said her group of government scientists was unaware the IHME group was also working on coronavirus projections. But she said the two groups “ended up at the same numbers.”
IHME, led by professor Chris Murray, predicted that the need for hospital beds, ICU beds, and ventilators across the country will far exceed the current capacity for coronavirus patients as soon as the second week of April.
Nationally, the wave of virus deaths in the U.S. are likely to persist into July, if people adhere to social distancing measures. Over the next four months, the U.S. is likely to experience about 81,000 deaths related to the virus. IHME estimates range from between 38,000 and 162,000 deaths.
”The trajectory of the pandemic will change – and dramatically for the worse – if people ease up on social distancing or relax with other precautions,” Murray said in a statement.
The Tennessee figures assume that the state had not issued a stay-at-home order, which Governor Bill Lee did Monday afternoon. It also assumed that all education facilities weren’t closed, non-essential businesses weren’t closed, and that travel had not been severely limited.
In all, IHME’s figures show that the state will lose 1,067 lives to coronavirus. The final death is projected to occur on June 6th.
Here’s a breakdown of the numbers needed to respond to coronavirus in Tennessee, according to the IHME:
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
Here’s what all those figures look like on the curve:
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
Here is the Tennessee’s peak death toll curve by day:
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
Here’s the state’s total death toll curve:
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
“We hope these forecasts will help leaders of medical systems figure out innovative ways to deliver high-quality care to those who will need their services in the coming weeks,” Murray said.
Click here to see all of IHME’s projections for Tennessee, every other U.S. state, and the U.S. as a whole.
The federal government is keeping its own projections private, according to a report in The Washington Post.
