The United States, officially the country most bereaved by the pandemic, exceeded 800,000 deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday, according to the results of Johns Hopkins University. This number is greater than the population of entire American states, such as North Dakota or Alaska. Around 450,000 deaths occurred in 2021, despite very effective vaccines having started to be authorized from December 2020, and widely available in the spring of 2021.
Mostly unvaccinated
The United States currently records an average of 1,150 Covid-19 deaths per day, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). The vast majority of deaths are unvaccinated people. About 72% of the American population has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, less than many countries, including France.
“As we pass the symbolic milestone of 800,000 Americans who have died of Covid-19, we remember each person, the lives they have lived, and we pray for their loved ones,” said US President Joe Biden in a statement . “I know what it’s like to have an empty chair around the kitchen table, especially during the holiday season, and my heart breaks for every family that goes through this pain,” he added. . Congress leaders observed a minute’s silence on Tuesday evening in honor of the lives lost.
Omicron variant spreads across the country
“We will remember that 800,000 loved ones have not made it this far: a lost father or grandfather, a mother or grandmother, a friend, a familiar face in the neighborhood,” said the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, in a press release. “We all know someone who has been taken away by this disease.”
This sad stage comes in the middle of the fifth wave of contaminations in the United States, linked like the previous one to the Delta variant. But experts are now worried about the Omicron variant, which is starting to spread in the country even if it only represents about 3% of new cases at the moment.
Omicron is spreading at an unprecedented rate on the planet, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday. The United States is the most bereaved country in the world, according to official figures released by the authorities, ahead of Brazil, India, Mexico and Russia. The pandemic has killed at least 5.3 million people around the world since the end of 2019, according to an assessment established by AFP from official sources on Tuesday. But according to the WHO, the real toll could be two to three times higher.