Over 38,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 in the first two weeks of 2021 and another 92,000 are projected to die from the disease over about the next three weeks, suggests an ensemble forecast published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Amid so many deaths from the viral disease, researchers say that the pandemic will reduce US life expectancy by more than a year to 77.48 years for the year 2020, which is lower than any year since 2003. Theresa Andrasfay of the University of Southern California and Noreen Goldman of Princeton Universitys Office of Population Research wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that some reduction in life expectancy may continue beyond 2020 owing to continued COVID-19 mortality as well as the pandemic’s long-term health, social, and economic impacts… (CNN, January 15, 2021)