The US death toll from Covid-19 has exceeded 800,000, an unimaginable figure that has been seen twice as sad as more than 200,000 people lost their lives after a vaccine was obtained last spring.
This figure represents the highest reported total for any country in the world, and probably the highest.
The United States is about 4% of the world’s population but about 15% of the 5.3 million people killed by coronavirus since the outbreak began in China two years ago.
A tragic event comes as the world watches an increase in cases of the new type of Omicron, with the World Health Organization (WHO) warning that it is spreading at an unprecedented rate.
The WHO chief executive, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told reporters on Tuesday that the difference had been found in 77 countries and that it was likely to be present in many countries around the world.
Omicron, first discovered by South Africa and reported to the WHO on November 24, has a large number of changes, which have alarmed scientists. The new alternative poses a new threat as it grows in the US, although experts are still not sure how dangerous it is.
The death toll from Covid in the US, compiled and released by Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday, is almost equal to the population of Atlanta and St Louis combined, or Minneapolis and Cleveland combined. It is approximately equal to the number of Americans who die each year from heart disease or stroke.
A highly anticipated prediction model from the University of Washington is a project of more than 880,000 deaths in the US on March 1st.
A deadly spell comes as cases and hospitalization are on the rise again in the US, a spike driven by the highly affected Delta species, which arrived in the first half of 2021 and now counts almost every disease. I
Health experts lamented that the majority of deaths in the US were extremely depressing because of widely available and effective vaccines that made them safer.
About 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated, or just over 60% of the population. That is very short of what scientists say is needed to preserve the virus.
“Almost all people who die are preventable deaths,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, a epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “And it’s because they are not vaccinated.”
When the vaccine was first introduced, the death toll in the country was about 300,000. It reached 600,000 by mid-June and 700,000 by 1 October.
Beyr recalled that in March or April 2020, one of the worst conditions predicted the deaths of more than 240,000 Americans.
“And I saw that number, and I thought that was amazing – the deaths of 240,000 Americans?” he said.
“And now we have tripled the value.” He added: “And I think it’s okay to say we’re not out of the woods yet.”