The death toll from COVID-19 in the U.S. has reached another sobering milestone.
Per an ongoing tally on coronavirus deaths from NBC News, the U.S. has now reached 500,000 deaths as of Sunday. Though the U.S. boasts less than five percent of the world’s population, the country currently accounts for more than a fifth of all COVID-19 deaths around the globe. At the time of this writing, the global total was nearing 2.5 million deaths.
That total number reported in the NBC tally—around 500,700 deaths—is comparable to the populations of Sacramento, California and Atlanta, Georgia. Meanwhile, the total number of confirmed cases in the U.S. is now nearing 29 million.
As the vaccine rollout continues across the country, authorities have been warning the public to be cautious about misinformation on social media while continuing to practice social distancing measures. And earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced they had seized more than 11 million counterfeit N95 masks.
“I can’t stress how important it is to ensure we have the legitimate 3M N95 masks that are being deployed to our first responders,” Steve Francis, the director of the Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, said last week.
This month also saw President Joe Biden confirming the U.S. was currently on track to have 600 million total vaccine doses by the end of July. Speaking to staff at the National Institutes of Health, the former Obama administration VP noted that his administration had inherited “a big mess” in terms of the pandemic.
“[Trump] didn’t order enough vaccines,” Biden said. “He didn’t mobilize enough people to administer the shots. He didn’t set up federal vaccine centers where eligible people could go and get their shots. When I became president three weeks ago, America had no plan to vaccinate most of the country.”
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