The United States has hit a chilling milestone amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Saturday afternoon, the U.S. officially recorded over 25 million confirmed cases of the virus, the most of any country in the world.
As of Sunday morning, over 417,390 people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19, according to theNew York Times' coronavirus database.
Behind the U.S, India has the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases, with over 10 million. Brazil has the third-highest with over 8.8 million, according todata from Johns Hopkins University.
According to theTimes,the official tally of confirmed cases in the U.S. works out to about one in every 13 people in the country or about 7.6 percent of the population.
“Twenty-five million cases is an incredible scale of tragedy,” Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the publication.
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The new tally comes just over a year afterthe first U.S. case of COVID-19was confirmed on Jan. 21, 2020. The patient was a man living near Seattle, Washington, who had recently returned from Wuhan, China, and immediately isolated himself.
According to the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention, 20,537,990 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the U.S. as of Sunday morning, despite there being nearly double that amount of vaccines— 41,411,550 — that have been distributed. Both vaccines require a wait of either three or four weeks before the second dose, which brings the vaccine protection up to around 95 percent.
Sandra Lindsay, the first person in the U.S. to receive a vaccine.MARK LENNIHAN/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Afaster-spreading COVID-19 strainis also circulating through the US.
However, researchers at Pfizer have said that its vaccineshould still be effectiveat fighting the B.1.1.7 variant.
As information about thecoronavirus pandemicrapidly changes,PEOPLEis committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources fromCDC,WHO, andlocal public health departments. To help provide doctors and nurses on the front lines with life-saving medical resources,donate to Direct Relief here.
source: people.com
