US coronavirus death toll hits 800,000

Despite availability of vaccines, US has seen more deaths this year than in 2020

The death toll from the coronavirus in the US has hit 800,000.

The grim milestone was reached on Sunday as the country prepared for a possible new outbreak of the virus prompted by the spread of the omicron variant.

The weather growing colder and people spending more time inside can also contribute to more cases of Covid-19.

The number of Americans who have died of Covid-19 is now higher than the entire population of North Dakota.

Despite the availability of vaccines, the US has seen more deaths this year than in 2020 because of the highly transmissible delta variant and the vaccine hesitancy among many Americans.

More than half of all US deaths from the pandemic – 57 per cent – occurred in 2021, with more than 450,000 Americans dying this year after being infected with Covid-19, according to Reuters.

Most of those who died this year were unvaccinated, experts have said, and the number of deaths has risen despite progress in Covid-related healthcare, such as treatments using monoclonal antibodies.

The US went from 600,00 lives lost to 700,000 in 111 days, Reuters reported. To go from 700,000 to 800,000 deaths took only 73 days. Other countries have seen far fewer deaths in relation to their populations in the last 11 months.

Within the group of the world’s seven wealthiest nations included in the G7, the US is the country that has the poorest record when it comes to deaths per capita between 1 January and 30 November of this year. The rate of deaths in the US was three times higher than in Canada and 11 times higher compared to Japan.

The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has 38 member countries. The US is in 30th place, with Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Colombia, Poland and Slovenia seeing more deaths per capita during the first 11 months of 2021. New Zealand had the least deaths per capita.

When put next to the entire European Union, a bloc of 27 countries with an estimated population of around 447 million people, the US has 1.3 times the deaths per capita over the last 11 months.

The US is ranked 36th in the Reuters analysis of more than 200 countries and territories. In terms of the total number of deaths related to Covid-19, the US ranks first in the world, with Brazil and India taking the next two spots.

Despite only having four per cent of the world’s people, the US accounts for 14 per cent of all reported Covid-19 deaths and 19 per cent of all reported cases.

The US is approaching 50 million cases of Covid-19.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 60 per cent of Americans have been fully vaccinated. Almost a million people a day are receiving booster shots. The delta variant is still the dominant strain of the virus in the US.

At a White House briefing on Tuesday, the head of the CDC Dr Rochelle Walensky said: “We must act together in this moment to address the impact of the current cases we are seeing, which are largely delta, and to prepare ourselves for the possibility of more omicron.”