THE United States reached the grim milestone of 600,000 coronavirus deaths Tuesday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

With the national case count topping 33.4 million, the death toll across the United States rose to 600,012 as of 12:22 p.m. local time, according to the CSSE data.

It was just over a year ago when the country recorded 100,000 confirmed virus-related deaths, reported ABC News.

“A year ago, we were already stunned by the sheer loss of life at the 100,000 milestone and now we recognize that the impact was far greater than we could have imagined,” said Dr. John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that 5.4 million Americans have lost a loved one because of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 death toll in the United States is now approaching the total number of American deaths that were recorded during the 1918 influenza pandemic and is more than 200 times higher than the number of lives lost during the Sept. 11 U.S. attacks.

“It is still very real. It is still something that is very serious and should be taken very seriously,” Shamayne Cruz, a respiratory therapist at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central in Colorado Springs, said.

Globally, COVID-19 has claimed more than 3.8 million lives. The United States accounts for about 16 percent of the world’s COVID-19 related deaths. The country has the highest death toll of any country in the world.

“This pandemic is really beyond anything that we’ve ever experienced and yet another milestone highlights the fact that we are still not yet out of the woods,” Brownstein said.

(SD-Agencies)