More than 500,000 people in the United States with COVID have died, according to Johns Hopkins University data, the highest death toll by far of any country in the world.
The country reached the harrowing tally on Monday, just about a year after the first known death was reported in the state of California.
“Today, we mark a truly heartbreaking milestone – 500,071 dead,” US President Joe Biden said after a moment of silence was observed on Monday evening at the White House, which was lighted by hundreds of candles representing those who have died.
“That is more Americans who have died in one year of this pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. That is more lives lost to this virus than any other nation on earth,” Biden said.
“But as we acknowledge the scale of this mass death in America, we remember each person and the life they lived. They were people we knew, or people we feel like we knew.”
In recent weeks, COVID-19 infection rates have started to drop as the Biden administration ramped up vaccinations and put more public health restrictions in place to try to stem the spread of the virus.
But on Sunday, Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said while case numbers are decreasing rapidly from a recent peak, Americans need to remain cautious as the US has not vaccinated enough people to reach herd immunity yet.
“We haven’t seen anything even close to this for well over 100 years, since the 1918 pandemic of influenza. It’s something that is stunning when you look at the numbers – almost unbelievable, but it’s true,” Fauci said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press programme.
“The slope that’s coming down is really terrific – it’s very steep and it’s coming down very, very quickly. But we are still at a level that’s very high,” he said.
“The baseline of daily infections is still very, very high … We want to get that baseline really, really, really low before we start thinking that we’re out of the woods.”
Flags at half-mast
US legislators from both the Republican and Democratic parties will hold a moment of silence in Congress on Tuesday to mark the sombre tally of 500,000 coronavirus-related deaths.
Biden also ordered US flags be flown at half-mast until sunset on February 26 at all federal buildings and military installations.
The president has pledged to take a more aggressive approach to get the pandemic under control than his predecessor, Donald Trump, who downplayed the threat of the virus and the need to enact strict public health guidelines.
He promised to administer 100 million coronavirus vaccine doses in his first 100 days in office, and he is pushing Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that he said will provide much-needed assistance to hard-hit families.
On Sunday, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the Biden administration also needs “to take a variety of steps to look at the previous administration’s response to the pandemic and what lessons we need to learn to make sure that never happens again”.
Sullivan also said the US wants to see a “credible, open, transparent international investigation led by the World Health Organization” into the pandemic.
The Biden administration has criticised China after reports surfaced that Beijing had refused to provide raw data to the WHO in the organisation’s probe into the origins of the virus.
