More than 700,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the US, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University, a toll roughly equivalent to the population of the nation's capital Washington, DC.
The grim threshold comes with an average of well over 1,000 dying each day, in a country where 55.7% of the population is now fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
After a heavily criticised early response to the pandemic, the United States organised an effective vaccine roll-out - only to see a significant portion of Americans still refusing to get the shots.
The US finds itself having notched the most fatalities in the world, far exceeding other frontrunners such as Brazil and India, and facing a