U.S. reaches 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 500,000 on Sunday,according to an NBC News tally — a milestone that underscores the grave threat the virus still poses nationwide even as more Americans get vaccinated.

The coronavirus has claimed the lives of more than 2,462,000 people worldwide, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The death toll in the U.S. is the highest in the world, even though the country has less than 5 percent of the global population.

However, public health experts and top government officials have said that precautions must remain in place to slow the spread of the virus.

“We are still at about 100,000 cases a day. We are still at around 1,500 to 3,500 deaths per day. The cases are more than two-and-a-half-fold times what we saw over the summer,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

“It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place,” Walensky added.

Daniel Arkin is a reporter for NBC News who focuses on popular culture and the entertainment industry, particularly film and television.

Category: Science

Source: NBC