The US has passed more than one million Covid-related deaths, says the White House.
President Joe Biden is ordering that flags be flown at half-staff to mark the milestone.
It’s the highest official total in the world – although the World Health Organization believes the true death toll may be much higher elsewhere.
The US has also recorded more than 80 million Covid cases, out of a 330 million population.
The first confirmed case was reported on 20 January 2020, when a man flew home to Seattle from Wuhan in China.
The 35-year-old survived, after 10 days of pneumonia, coughs, fever, nausea and vomiting. But deaths began to be reported just a few weeks later.
In the two years since, death rates have ebbed and flowed as waves of the virus swept across the country – reaching highs of more than 4,000 a day in early 2021.
Public health experts give several reasons for the high US death toll – including high rates of obesity and hypertension, overworked hospital systems, some vaccine hesitancy and a large older population.
Each US state may have a slightly different way to define a Covid death, and such deaths are often not solely because of the virus.
Source: BBC
