The Census Bureau estimates that the last week of December puts the U.S. population at around 330,750,000. On Saturday afternoon, the national death toll from Covid-19 reached 331,116, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Covid-19 infections in the U.S. have reached more than 18.7 million.
The first death in the U.S. attributed to Covid-19 occurred on February 29 in Kirkland, Washington. However, autopsy results in April determined that two Californians died of Covid-19 in early February.
The World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic on March 11th. In late March, the nation’s 1,000th death toll was recorded, according to a CNN account. Some states at the time initiated restrictive blocking protocols to try to curb the spread. Meanwhile, most European countries were in the middle of a Covid-19 wave that overwhelmed hospitals and health systems.
Within weeks, data from Johns Hopkins showed that at least 10,000 Americans had died of Covid-19 on April 4th. Health experts warned that due to testing problems and misclassifications, the total number of deaths could be underestimated.
With an average rate of more than 1,000 deaths a day, the U.S. count reached 100,000 on May 23, according to data from Johns Hopkins, four months after the first confirmed infection on U.S. soil.
During the summer, mortality rates and infections across the country slowed from the April highs, although different states experienced intermittent outbreaks, leading to an increase in local figures. Four months after the deaths of 100,000 Americans in May, a total of 200,000 U.S. deaths were recorded on September 21st.
Since November, mortality rates have accelerated. Instead of a similar incline that took four months to reach 200,000, the next jump to 300,000 deaths took only 11 weeks. The brand was announced on December 14th.
Health officials are urging the U.S. public to remain vigilant with coronavirus protocols, including quarantine, social distancing, and the use of masks. Officials in California, where infections have grown at an alarming rate, have directly attributed coronavirus fatigue to a driving force behind the November rise.
With the arrival of Christmas and New Year, along with accounting for the long incubation period of the virus, hospitals and state governments are preparing for the rise to continue in January and February, a year after the start of the pandemic.
CNN’s Hollie Silverman contributed to this report.
.Source
Related