FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ An influential model used by the White House to chart the coronavirus pandemic is showing that fewer Floridians will die of the new virus than initially thought.
Florida can expect 149 deaths a day at the epidemic's peak on April 21, reaching a death count of 4,357 by early June, according to the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
That number is down from an earlier projection, which showed that as many as 242 people would die daily at the peak with a death count of 6,774.
The revised model is now forecasting Florida will not face a shortage of hospital and intensive-care beds. About 1,323 ventilators will be needed, compared with 2,095 in the earlier projection.
The projection assumes that people will stay home through May 1. Revisions are being made based off "massive influx of new data" from states with early epidemics and signs that social-distancing measures are working, according to Dr. Christopher Murray, the institute's director.
"If social-distancing measures are relaxed or not implemented, the U.S. will see greater death tolls, the death peak will be later, the burden on hospitals will be much greater, and the economic costs will continue to grow," he said in a news release.
On Tuesday, hard-hit New York reported a record 731 deaths, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo said hospitalizations appear to be leveling off, a sign that social-distancing measures are slowing the spread of the virus.
The University of Washington's model is just one of several projections, but the White House has used it extensively and based decisions off of it.
The Washington model makes "strong assumptions" that Americans will isolate themselves and slow the epidemic's spread, said William Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
It is a more optimistic model used by scientists, and other models show the toll could be worse, he said.
"I'd be cautious about taking any model in isolation," Hanage said.
As of Wednesday morning, 296 COVID-19 deaths had been reported in Florida, along with 14,700 confirmed cases.
