US nears ‘almost unbelievable’ 500,000 coronavirus deaths
- The nation’s top diseases expert Anthony Fauci warns that normal life may still be some way off despite the arrival of vaccines and a decline in new cases
- The US continues to be the country that has reported the most infections and fatalities in the world
The United States was on the brink Sunday of the grim milestone of 500,000 coronavirus-related deaths since the start of the pandemic, as the nation’s top virus expert warned a form of normalcy may not return until the end of the year.
Signs of hope were emerging in the roll-out of vaccines and the dropping off of a massive winter spike in infections, but the heavy toll continues to mount in a nation that has reported the most fatalities and cases in the world.
“It’s terrible. It is historic. We haven’t seen anything even close to this for well over a hundred years, since the 1918 pandemic of influenza,” Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden, said on NBC’s Meet The Press.
“It’s something that is stunning when you look at the numbers, almost unbelievable, but it’s true,” he added, as the toll on the Johns Hopkins University tracking website stood at more than 497,000.
After the first Covid-19 death was announced in the US in February 2020 it took about three months to pass the 100,000 mark, during a first wave that hit New York particularly hard.
But as the outbreak grew in the United States the pace of deaths increased, with the toll jumping from 400,000 in just over a month amid a spike fuelled in part by holiday gatherings.