The death toll from COVID-19 in the United States has reached 400,000, just one month after hitting 300,000, signaling the rapid rate at which the virus spread in the colder months on the tail end of the holiday season.
The U.S. reached 300,000 reported deaths on Dec. 17, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. The one month it took to reach 400,000 is the fastest that coronavirus deaths have reached a 100,000 mark. After deaths were first tracked in late February, it took until late May, nearly three months, to reach 100,000. The summer months seemed to slow the spread of the virus, and it took over four months, until early October, to reach 200,000 deaths.
The colder months of fall and winter, combined with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, have caused a huge surge in the number of COVID-19 deaths. Total deaths reached 300,000 in only about two and a half months after reaching 200,000. Daily deaths have reached record numbers recently, with Jan. 13 being the high point, at 4,087.
The U.S. has launched a high-stakes immunization campaign, a massive undertaking that began in mid-December and has so far reached roughly 14.7 million people. Several states have utilized more than half of their allocated doses already, while more than half of all states have barely made a dent in their supplies. This disparity is due, in part, to a lack of qualified personnel who can administer the shots.
The rollout has been marred by delivery delays, miscommunication between states and the federal government, and confused messaging at the state level about the populations eligible for the first round of shots. The Trump administration scrambled to remedy delays in administering the first tranche of shots by announcing last week that millions of doses meant for booster shots would be distributed to the states in an effort to get as many people inoculated with at least one dose as quickly as possible. The incoming administration had already announced it would not hold back any additional doses as part of President-elect Joe Biden’s pledge to deliver 100 million shots in his first 100 days in office.
The U.S. also faces new strains of the virus that are more contagious. The U.K. variant, called SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7, has been found in 20 states in the U.S. Recent research from Imperial College London suggests that it may be 40% to 70% more transmissible than previous strains of the virus. However, it does not lead to more severe cases of COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that it could be the dominant strain in the U.S. by March.
