More than 500,000 people died of Covid-19 in the United States, just over a year after the country detected its first cases of a virus that caused an almost unprecedented loss.
Deaths exceeded half a million on Monday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, bringing the total to 500,071. More than 28 million people have also tested positive for coronavirus in the USA.
Both numbers are the worst in the world and the pandemic has cast a strong spotlight on the U.S. ability to deal with such a disaster, especially during Donald Trump’s tumultuous tenure, whose government has spoiled the government’s response.
After a devastating increase in cases in winter, for the first time in months, the average number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. dropped to less than 100,000 on February 12. Even with the reduction in cases, the US still experiences 1,500 to 3,500 deaths per day and public health officials have warned that recent progress can easily be reversed.
Perhaps the biggest threat is new variants of the virus, which seem to spread more quickly and easily. Scientists are working to understand how these variants can change vaccine effectiveness as the United States tries to scale up its inoculation distribution.
About 13% of the US population, or 43 million people, received their first dose of the vaccine, according to the Washington Post. Joe Biden promised this month to make 600 million doses of the vaccine available by the end of July.
To avoid another increase in cases, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rochelle Walensky, said that guidelines for wearing the mask should remain in effect and people should continue to use physical distance to prevent spread of the virus.
A year after the first known Covid infections in the United States, the Joe Biden government made the health and economic response to the pandemic a priority for the White House, after Donald Trump spent most of 2020 minimizing and discarding his terrible toll.
In the first year of the pandemic, more people died from Covid-19 than those who died from respiratory illnesses, guns and car accidents in the United States in an average year.
Earlier this month, a Lancet commission said the United States could have prevented 40% of deaths from Covid-19 if the country’s death rates matched those of other high-income G7 countries.
The Trump administration reacted slowly at the start of the pandemic and then frequently sought to undermine the science surrounding the virus, including the spread of unfounded conspiracy theories and unverified treatments. Trump, who ended up becoming infected, ignited racial tensions by blaming China and also despising widely accepted practices, such as wearing masks.
Covid-19 deaths, hospitalizations and cases disproportionately affected blacks, Latinos and Indians. American Indians or Alaskan Natives died 2.4 times the rate of whites, blacks 1.9 times more and Latinos 2.3 times the rate, according to the CDC.
It has been just over a year since Covid-19’s first known death in the United States on February 6, 2020, although the death was not reported until April of the same year. In early February 2020, the first confirmed cases in the country were detected in people returning from abroad, although the virus is now believed to have been spreading in the country for months.
It was in Seattle, in late February 2020, that the rapid spread of the disease became evident to the country, as the virus spread through a long-term institution, causing the death of at least 46 people.
Local blockades were soon implemented in many parts of the country, and by early April, New York City had become the epicenter of the global outbreak.
In October, scientists at the University of Washington warned that the death toll in the United States could reach half a million people by the end of February. The University’s Health Assessment and Metrics Institute now projects that the death toll will be 616,000 by June 1.
The scientists said the trajectory of the next four months will be determined by the distribution of the vaccine, decreased transmission of the virus in the warmer months, new variants and individual adherence to the use of a mask and other public health guidelines.