World News: Covid claims one million US lives – Gulf Digital News

World News: Covid claims one million US lives – Gulf Digital News

NEW YORK - The United States has now recorded more than 1 million Covid-19 deaths, according to a Reuters tally, crossing a once-unthinkable milestone about two years after the first cases upended everyday life and quickly transformed it.

The 1 million mark is a stark reminder of the staggering grief and loss caused by the pandemic even as the threat posed by the virus wanes in the minds of many people. It represents about one death for every 327 Americans, or more than the entire population of San Francisco or Seattle.

By the time the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, the virus had claimed 36 lives in the United States. In the months that followed, the deadly virus spread like wildfire, finding fertile ground in densely populated urban areas such as New York City and then reaching every corner of the country. By June 2020, the US death toll had surpassed the total of the country's military deaths in World War One and it would exceed the American military losses of War World Two by January 2021 when more than 405,000 deaths were recorded.

The disease has left few places on Earth untouched, with 6.7