The United States on Sunday reached 800,000 coronavirus-related deaths, according to a Reuters tally, as the nation braces for a potential surge in infections due to more time spent indoors with colder weather and the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the virus, AzVision.az reports citing Reuters.
The milestone means the U.S. death toll from this one virus now exceeds the entire population of North Dakota.
Even with vaccines widely and freely available, the country has lost more lives to the virus this year than in 2020 due to the more contagious Delta variant and people refusing to get inoculated against COVID-19.
Since the start of the year, over 450,000 people in the United States have died after contracting COVID-19, or 57% of all U.S. deaths from the illness since the pandemic started.
The deaths this year were mostly in unvaccinated patients, health experts say. Deaths have increased despite advances in caring for COVID patients and new treatment options such as monoclonal antibodies.
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