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US Exceeds 400,000 Coronavirus Deaths

US Exceeds 400,000 Coronavirus Deaths

President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill, along with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, listen as Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archbishop of Washington, delivers the invocation during a COVID-19 memorial, with lights placed around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Tuesday,, in Washington. (AP/Alex Brandon)

By    |   Tuesday, 19 January 2021 04:26 PM EST

More than 400,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday, the eve of the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden, who has made the fight against the coronavirus a priority of his first term.

The bleak threshold was reached only about a month after the U.S. recorded its 300,000th death from the disease, in mid-December, and nearly a year since it announced its first COVID death, at the end of February 2020.

The toll in the world's wealthiest nation remains by far the highest in absolute terms, though some other countries are registering more deaths in proportion to their populations, such as Italy, Britain and Belgium.

After the first COVID-19 death was announced in the U.S. in February 2020 it took about three months to pass the 100,000 mark, during a first wave that hit New York particularly hard.

It took another four months to reach 200,000 fatalities, and just under three months to reach 300,000.

But as cases have surged across the country with the arrival of winter and the holiday season in recent months, deaths have followed suit.

About one American in two believes the virus is currently not at all under control, according to a Washington Post-NBC poll released Tuesday.

Some 120,000 people are currently hospitalized because of COVID-19, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which analyzes data from across the country on a daily basis.

Amid the news, incoming director of the Centers for Disease Control said Monday that by next month another 100,000 deaths are expected.

"By the middle of February, we expect half a million deaths in this country," Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.

'Grieving loved ones'

The U.S. has recorded more than 24.1 million cases, according to the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus tracking website — though with testing shaky at the start of the pandemic, the real toll is believed to be much higher.

The U.S. began vaccinating its residents in mid-December, but it will take months before the current outbreak can be contained.

Just over three percent of the population, or about 10.5 million people, have so far received one of the two vaccines licensed in the US — developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna — of which 1.6 million people have received the two required doses.

Biden, eager to speed things up, has promised 100 million doses injected during his first 100 days in office.

To achieve that goal he will push for the creation of new community vaccination centers in gyms, stadiums and schools, and will mobilize an additional 100,000 health care workers.

States including Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Carolina and Vermont have shown signs of vaccine supply strain and are asking for more doses of both approved vaccines, one from Pfizer-BioNTech and the other from Moderna.

The number of deaths has spiked since Christmas.

During the past three weeks, U.S. coronavirus fatalities have totaled 63,793 compared with 52,715 deaths in the three weeks prior to Christmas, an increase of 21%, according to a Reuters analysis.

The daily COVID-19 death numbers crossed 4,000 for the first time on Jan. 6.

Eighteen U.S. states, including California, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington reported their highest daily death numbers in January, according to the Reuters tally.

The number of coronavirus cases has risen across all U.S. regions and on Tuesday crossed 24 million since the pandemic started.

While seriously ill patients are straining healthcare systems in parts of the country, especially in California, the national rate of hospitalizations has leveled off in the past two weeks and was near 124,000 on Tuesday.

Information from Reuters and AFP was used.

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More than 400,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday.
covid deaths
606
2021-26-19
Tuesday, 19 January 2021 04:26 PM
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