WEB DESK
The United States, the country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, crossed 800,000 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University showed. The figure is greater than the entire population of several states, including North Dakota and Alaska.
Around 450,000 of the deaths occurred in 2021, despite highly effective vaccines that were first authorized in December 2020 and widely available by springtime. The vast majority of the deaths have been among the unvaccinated.
President Joe Biden said in a statement that, as country mark the tragic milestone of 800,000 American deaths due to Covid-19, he remember each person and the lives they lived, and pray for the loved ones left behind. He said. as nation head into the winter and confront a new variant, citizen must resolve to keep fighting this virus together.
According to official data, the risk of dying from Covid-19 was 14 times higher among people who had not been fully vaccinated. Vaccinations picked up during the fourth wave of the disease, driven by the Delta variant, and more than 60 percent of the country’s 332 million people are now fully vaccinated — though the United States still lags behind other wealthy nations.
The country is now into its fifth wave, with the epicenter in colder northern states, as people gather more often indoors.
Omicron, the latest variant of concern that has caused worldwide alarm since it was first reported in South Africa in late November, now accounts for around three percent of US cases, but that is expected to rise rapidly, as has been seen in other countries.