Researchers at Columbia University in New York City developed the model, which estimates that 3.6 million people have COVID-19 and are shedding enough of the virus to infect other people. This figure marks a 34 percent increase in estimated infections compared to a week prior, according to Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, an epidemiologist at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health whose team created the model.
“It’s bad; it’s really, really bad,” Dr. Shaman told the Post. “We’re running into Thanksgiving now, and that’s only going to make it worse. We’re going to go through a lot of people being infected between now and the end of the year, unfortunately.”
The 3.6 million figure represents nearly 1 percent of the U.S. population and is nearly equivalent to the number of public school teachers nationwide, according to the Post. The model estimates another 3 million people likely have latent infections, meaning they recently contracted the virus but are not contagious.
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