Harvard Professor Sounds Alarm on ‘Likely’ Coronavirus Pandemic: 40% to 70% of World Could Be Infected This Year

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Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health professor Marc Lipsitch told the Wall Street Journal this week that “it is likely we’ll see a global pandemic” of the coronavirus with up to 70 percent of people infected worldwide.

“I think it is likely we’ll see a global pandemic,” Lipsitch claimed, adding that “If a pandemic happens, 40% to 70% of people world-wide are likely to be infected in the coming year.”

What proportion of those will be symptomatic, I can’t give a good number,” he continued.

Others have also predicted that the coronavirus could infect between 60 and 80 percent of the planet.

Outside of China, coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, and Australia, among others.

Fifteen cases have been reported in the US, 15 in Australia, 14 in Germany, 11 in France, 9 in the UK, and 7 in Canada.

In an article for the New Scientist, Tuesday, reporters Michael Le Page and Debora MacKenzie wrote that “no one knows” whether the coronavirus “could infect 60 per cent of the world’s population and kill 1 in 100 of those infected – around 50 million people,” because “there are many things we still don’t know about the virus.”

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