The final presidential debate is in the books and our VERIFY team is digging into everything that was said to separate fact from falsehood: For example, former Vice President Joe Biden said an estimated 200,000 more people will die from COVID-19 by the end of the year if no action is taken. That claim is false but has been repeated by many people online recently. The projection has been updated to 316,000 deaths, which is an estimated 93,000 more deaths by the end of the year.
President Trump also made a false claim about coronavirus' mortality rate.
The mortality rate tracks the percentage of patients who die from a disease after being diagnosed. Johns Hopkins data estimates that the current observed mortality rate in the U.S. is 2.7%.
When VERIFY first reported on the COVID-19 mortality rate in January -- the mortality rate was about 2%. That’s actually an increase.
The 85% number that the president mentioned can be found by comparing the number of weekly deaths during the peak in April to the most recent recorded week.
On the week of April 18th, 17,077 people died, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the week of Oct. 10, 2,540 people died. That’s a drop of about 85%.
Sources: CDC; Johns Hopkins; January VERIFY
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