U.S COVID-19 deaths overshoot 100,000

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The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic exceeded 100,000 on Wednesday, according to the John Hopkins University data dashboard.

Yet about half of Americans are unsure they would get vaccinated if one becomes available, a new poll shows.

U.S deaths have more than doubled within the last month, when the public health crisis reached 50,000 deaths on 24 April, one of the deadliest months in US history that saw the deaths of nearly 60,000 people by its end.

The grim marker stands in devastating contrast to the death tolls in other developed countries, while President Trump’s shifting predictions, varying wildly from “zero” new infections to “hopefully” less than 100,000 deaths, have been eclipsed by a growing number of deaths that experts believe undercounts the lives lost from the virus.

On 15 May, the CDC had projected the death toll would reach 100,000 by 1 June.

While the milestone was reached earlier than anticipated, many pundits argued that the actual death toll will probably have hit that figure days before the official tallies reflect it. And despite scientists’ best efforts, that date may forever go unmarked.

Researchers are now doing detective work, revisiting autopsies from early this year and studying how the virus has subtly evolved to try to trace when Covid-19 may have first sickened and killed people in the US. Infectious disease experts caution, however, that finding a “patient zero”, or even figuring out exactly how many Americans were infected and died before testing was available, will be nearly impossible.

Globally, Brazil was fast becoming the pandemic’s latest epicenter. There are more than 5.6 million confirmed cases around the world, with nearly 1.7 million in the United States, according to the John Hopkins University data dashboard.

More than 353,000 people have died worldwide. The U.S. has lost more than 100,000 people in a span of less than four months, more than the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam and Korean wars combined.

 

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