It is estimated that COVID-19 deaths in the United States will reach 1 million sometime in 2022, after it reached 800,000 on Monday.
In roughly two years since the first set of COVID-19 victims in the United States were reported in February 2020, there have been 800,156 confirmed deaths.
NBC News reported that this number exceeds that of no other nation and is greater than the populations of Boston, Washington, D.C., or Seattle combined.
Moreover, the large increase from 700,000 to 800,000 deaths occurred in just 74 days, while the previous increase of up to 100,000 deaths took just 119 days.
“It’s a very sad moment, it’s mind-boggling,” Dr. Michael Rodriguez of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles said to NBC News.
“We’re beyond numb.”
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More state and local health departments are expected to provide new data on Monday, adding to the death toll.
In the United States, the seven-day death average reached 1,092, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an increase of 27.8% from the previous week, according to reports from NBC.
Vin Gupta, M.D., associate professor of critical care pulmonology at the University of Washington in Seattle, said the pandemic does not appear to be slowing down soon. According to him, the U.S. death toll is expected to reach 1 million by the end of next year.
“That’s just the reality of the situation,” he said to NBC News.
“The same people who didn’t get an initial shot won’t get boosters. It’s a lot of preventable death.”