“We project that roughly 56 percent of our population – 25.5 million people – will be infected with the virus over an eight-week period.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office projects that more than half of all Californians will be infected with coronavirus in two months, according to a letter Newsom sent President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
After releasing the letter on Thursday, the Newsom administration quickly sought to clarify its projection, saying that the number did not account for aggressive measures the state is taking to slow the spread of the virus.
“This projection shows why it’s so critical that Californians take action to slow the spread of the disease – and those mitigation efforts aren’t taken into account in that number,” Newsom spokesman Nathan Click wrote in an email. “The state is deploying every resource at its disposal to meet this challenge, and we continue to ask for the federal government’s assistance in this fight.”
