Coronavirus updates: Johnson & Johnson pauses vaccine trial

Up to half of COVID-19 deaths in the United States could have been prevented, according to a research letter published in JAMA Monday.

The research relies on modeling, meaning it is an estimation by scientists that's subject to change as we discover more about the virus and not an official count of preventable deaths. 

The researchers sited weak public health infrastructure and the United States' "decentralized, inconsistent" response to the pandemic as key factors driving preventable deaths and noted that the U.S. population is on the younger side but includes a disproportionate number of citizens with comorbidities.

World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that achieving herd immunity is not a viable strategy for stemming the spread of coronavirus.

Less than 10% of the world's population has been infected with the virus, according to WHO, meaning that most individuals are still susceptible to the disease. Among those who have been exposed, there are many unknowns, including how high the immune response is after infection, how long it protects, and what the long-term impacts of infection are.

Worldwide COVID-19 cases continue to increase, with the highest rise occurring in the last four days, according to WHO. As of Monday, there had been 37.6 million infections worldwide according to Johns Hopkins University.

ABC News' Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.

Whistleblower Rick Bright, the federal vaccine expert who was ousted from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after he lodged a complaint against the Trump Administration earlier this year, said that the public should not trust the White House when it comes to information about the coronavirus, during an interview with ABC's The View on Monday.

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Dr. Rick Bright and director Alex Gibney on Trump's handling of COVID-19 pandemic

Bright explains his distrust in the Trump administration and Gibney, director of "Totally Under Control," reacts to the president's coronavirus diagnosis.

ABCNews.com

"We need to hear directly from the scientists at the CDC, at the FDA and at the NIH," Bright said. "Public health guidelines have been disparaged and ignored," he added, referring to the White House.

"This is why we have 215,000 dead Americans today. This is why we have up to 50,000 new infections today. This is why we're going to have terrible winter if we don't do something now to turn around the rhetoric, tell people the truth."

An ABC News analysis of COVID-19 trends across all 50 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico found there were increases in newly confirmed cases over the past two weeks in 32 states as well as the nation's capital.

The analysis also found increases in the daily positivity rate of COVID-19 tests in 22 states plus D.C., increases in COVID-19 hospitalizations in 35 states and increases in daily COVID-19 death tolls in 13 states plus Puerto Rico.

The seven-day average of new cases in the United States is the highest it has been since Aug. 17.

Last week, 14 states reported their greatest single-day increases in the number of new COVID-19 cases, while 14 states hit a record number of current COVID-19 hospitalizations and two states recorded their highest single-day death tolls from the disease.

The trends were all analyzed from data collected and published by the COVID Tracking Project over the past two weeks, using the linear regression trend line of the seven-day moving average.

ABC News' Benjamin Bell, Brian Hartman, Soorin Kim and Arielle Mitropolous contributed to this report.