US DEATH TOLL FROM COVID-19 SURPASSES 900,000′

Sat 05 February 2022:

The US COVID-19 death toll topped 900,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, less than two months after the country surpassed 800,000 fatalities.

Friday’s somber milestone comes 13 months into a US vaccinations campaign hampered by disinformation and political wrangling, despite the fact that the vaccines have proven to be safe and effective in averting serious illness and death.

“It is an astronomically high number,” said Dr Ashish K Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

“If you had told most Americans two years ago as this pandemic was getting going that 900,000 Americans would die over the next few years, I think most people would not have believed it.”

While the brutal Omicron wave is easing its grip on the US – with new cases of COVID-19 falling in 49 of the country’s 50 states – deaths are running at more than 2,400 per day on average, the highest level since the last northern winter.

The US has the highest reported coronavirus death toll of any country in the world, and even then, the actual number of lives lost directly or indirectly to COVID-19 is thought to be significantly higher.

Experts believe some COVID-19 deaths have been misattributed to other conditions, while some Americans are thought to have died of chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes because they were unable or unwilling to obtain treatment during the crisis.

“We have underestimated our enemy here, and we have under-prepared to protect ourselves,” said Dr Joshua M Sharfstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Sixty-four percent of Americans, or about 212 million people, are fully vaccinated, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

When the vaccine drive rolled out in mid-December 2020, the death toll stood at about 300,000. It hit 600,000 in mid-June 2021 and 700,000 on October 1. It reached 800,000 on December 14.

The most recent 100,000 deaths include those caused by both the Delta and Omicron variants, the latter of which began spreading rapidly in December and quickly became the dominant strain in the United States.

While Omicron has been shown to be less likely than Delta to cause serious illness, the higher number of people infected with Omicron contributed to the high number of deaths.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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