The number of deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. reached 500,000 on Sunday, according to a count from NBC News – a milestone that underscores the serious threat the virus still poses across the country, even as more Americans are vaccinated.
The coronavirus has claimed the lives of more than 2,462,000 people worldwide, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The death toll in the United States is the highest in the world, although the country has less than 5% of the global population.
The NBC News count showed that about 500,002 people died from Covid-19 on Sunday afternoon. The death toll rivals the population of Atlanta or Sacramento, California, and is more than double the number of Americans who died in battle in World War II, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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More than 28,206,600 cases have been confirmed in the United States, according to the NBC News count. California, the most populous state, was hit particularly hard: 3,527,641 confirmed cases and 49,110 deaths by Sunday.
The average number of new daily cases has decreased in the past few days. The number dropped to less than 100,000 on February 12 for the first time in months.
However, public health experts and senior government officials said precautions must remain in place to slow the spread of the virus.
“We are still in about 100,000 cases a day. We are still at about 1,500 to 3,500 deaths per day. The cases are more than two and a half times what we saw over the summer, ”Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on NBC’s” Meet the Press “program on Sunday.
“It is encouraging to see these trends falling, but they are coming from an extraordinarily high place,” added Walensky.
