WATCH: President Trump falsely claims the nation is "rounding the corner" on COVID-19

During the final presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Vice President Joe Biden on Oct. 22, Trump touted his administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. He cited a worst-case epidemiological model released this spring that projected as many as 2.2 million people in the U.S. could lose their lives to the virus if the U.S. failed to emphasize pandemic precautions like social distancing and hand washing. But that model was just one of many, and the fact remains that over 220,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that the number of deaths that have occurred in the U.S. through September of this year is between 10 to 13 percent higher than it would have been in the absence of the pandemic.

As both the daily coronavirus death toll and case count continue to climb nationwide, with major spikes occurring in multiple states, public health officials fear that trend will worsen as temperatures drop and people increasingly move their social lives inside.

Trump falsely claimed that the U.S. is "rounding the corner" on the pandemic and that COVID-19 mortality rate has dropped 85 percent. A recent study of a single health system found that the mortality rate decreased by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began, from 25.6 percent to 7.6 percent, and another suggests that it’s fallen by around 20 points. A variety of factors could have contributed to that drop, including a widespread increase in mask wearing and social distancing compared to the early days of the pandemic and the fact that physicians have an increasingly better understanding of COVID-19, allowing them to more effectively treat the disease. But death is not the only grim outcome of a COVID-19 case, given that some survivors endure lasting symptoms and health issues after they contract the disease.

Trump said that a vaccine will be announced “within weeks,” adding that the military will assist in distributing it. But it will likely take months or longer to vaccinate every willing person in the country. Top public health officials have noted the possibility that early vaccines won’t necessarily confer full immunity, meaning measures like mask wearing and social distancing will continue to be important. The president also claimed that he is now “immune” to the virus after contracting it earlier this month, but scientists are not yet certain how long COVID-19 survivors are protected from reinfection after getting over their first cases of it.

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