The US has passed more than one million Covid-related deaths, says the White House.
President Joe Biden said the country was marking “a tragic milestone” and each death was “an irreplaceable loss”.
It’s the highest official total in the world – although the World Health Organization believes the true death toll may be much higher elsewhere.
The US has also recorded more than 80 million Covid cases, out of a 330 million population.
The first confirmed case was reported on 20 January 2020, when a man flew home to Seattle from Wuhan in China.
The 35-year-old survived, after 10 days of pneumonia, coughs, fever, nausea and vomiting. But deaths began to be reported just a few weeks later.
In the two years since, death rates have ebbed and flowed as waves of the virus swept across the country – reaching highs of more than 4,000 a day in early 2021.
Public health experts give several reasons for the high US death toll – including high rates of obesity and hypertension, overworked hospital systems, some vaccine hesitancy and a large older population.
The US has seen the number of daily reported deaths spike on several occasions, often coming as new variants spread across the country.
The first wave – the initial pandemic – saw highs of more than 2,500 daily reported deaths in April 2020, about eight months before the first vaccines were rolled out in December.
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