The death toll from COVID-19 in the United States has reached 500,000.
The number of deaths attributed to the coronavirus has risen by over 100,000 in just over a month and by 200,000 in just over two months: The U.S. reached 300,000 reported deaths on Dec. 17, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
The death count now far exceeds the scenarios envisioned by U.S. officials early in the pandemic. The Trump administration hoped last spring to keep total deaths under 60,000. Dr. Anthony Fauci, then a member of the coronavirus task force and now President Biden’s top medical adviser, suggested that 100,000 to 200,000 might be the total number.
Instead, the pandemic death count is nearing that of the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevent estimates cost 675,000 lives.
The count of COVID-19 deaths is subject to reporting error. A CDC analysis of excess deaths puts the true toll higher — up to nearly 600,000 through the beginning of February.
After deaths were first tracked in late February 2020, it took until late May, nearly three months, to reach 100,000. The summer months seemed to slow the spread of the virus, and it took over four months, until early October, to reach 200,000 deaths.
CORONAVIRUS REPORTED DEATH TOLL REACHES 400K, ONE MONTH AFTER 300K MARK
But the Thanksgiving and December holiday season, when many people gathered indoors to celebrate, helped create the biggest surge yet for the U.S. As new cases increased, so did hospitalization, rising from about 50,000 in early November to over 132,000 at its peak on Jan. 6. COVID-19 patients in intensive care units also rose precipitously during that period, from about 10,000 to just under 24,000.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
COVID-19 deaths began to rise soon thereafter. The last day the U.S. had fewer than 1,000 daily deaths was on Nov. 29, when 825 deaths occurred. Currently, the seven-day average for daily deaths is over 2,500.
