Washington, Nov 20 (IANS): More than 3 million people in the US are actively infected with the novel coronavirus and are potentially contagious, a figure significantly higher than the official tally, according to a recent study.

A model conducted by the team of Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist from the Columbia University, there are currently an estimated 3.6 million active infections in the country, and are capable of passing enough virus to infect others, reports Xinhua news agency.

The official count solely based its data on people who have tested positive for the virus.

However, there are also many asymptomatic people who do not know that they are infected.

"It's bad; it's really, really bad," said Shaman, an expert on infectious disease transmission and forecast, adding that the upcoming Thanksgiving Day celebrations will likely worsen the spread of the virus.

"We're going to go through a lot of people being infected between now and the end of the year, unfortunately," he said.

As of Friday, the US is the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths at 11,710,084 and 252,484, according to the Johns Hopkins University.