Coronavirus: US COVID-19 death toll tops 800,000

More than 800,000 people have died nationwide of COVID-19 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, marking another grim milestone fueled by the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.

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The U.S. topped 800,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Tuesday night, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. More than 200,000 people have died of the viral infection since vaccines against COVID-19 first became available about a year ago, according to The Associated Press.

“Almost all the people dying are now dying preventable deaths,” Dr. Chris Beyrer, a public health researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the AP. “And that’s because they’re not immunized. And you know that, God, it’s a terrible tragedy.”

Since Dec. 3, the seven-day average number of COVID-19 deaths has topped 1,000 nationwide, NPR reported, citing numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The numbers were fueled by the arrival of the delta variant in the U.S., which appeared in the summer and currently accounts for a vast majority of new infections, according to NPR.

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Health officials have recently begun investigating the possible effects of a newly identified variant, omicron, which appears to be more contagious than the delta variant. The omicron variant, first identified in Botswana on Nov. 11, has spread to several countries and appeared in more than two dozen states.

“I think that over the course of the next three to four weeks, we’re going to see a real impact from omicron,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NPR. “The question is, what will that impact be? And we just don’t know yet.”

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Amid the recent uncertainty, public health officials have urged people to get vaccinated or get their booster shots to protect themselves against severe illness from COVID-19.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 72% of the U.S. population – 239.5 million people – has gotten at least one dose of any of the available COVID-19 vaccines, according to the CDC. About 61% of Americans, or 202.5 million people, have been fully vaccinated, and more than 27% of those who have been fully vaccinated have gotten booster shots, CDC data shows.

The U.S. continues to lead the world with the highest number of reported COVID-19 cases at more than 50.2 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. The second-most cases in the world have been reported in India, where 34.7 million infections have been logged, while nearly 22.2 million other cases have been reported in Brazil, according to the university.

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