Spotlight: Experts warn COVID-19 may surge in fall, winter as death toll in U.S. tops 200,000

WASHINGTON. KAZINFORM Leading experts warned that COVID-19 cases may surge in fall and winter in the United States as the pandemic has caused over 200,000 deaths as of Tuesday.

Months into the pandemic, the United States has currently recorded more than 6.88 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 200,500 deaths, according to the real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University, Xinhua reports.

Still, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and other data issues.

Stanley Perlman, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa, warned that the numbers of cases may surge in fall and winter. «But we hope that with appropriate measures and perhaps a vaccine, the surge will be less than we fear,» he told Xinhua.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the first COVID-19 case in the United States on Jan. 21. Four months later, on May 27, the U.S. death toll reached 100,000.

The novel coronavirus has now killed nearly twice as many Americans as the 116,516 who died in World War I, the third-deadliest conflict in the nation's history, according to a report of ABC News.