By the time the World Health Organization (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, finding fertile ground in densely populated urban areas like New York and then reaching every corner of the country.
By June 2020, the US death toll had surpassed the country’s total military deaths in World War I. and would exceed US military losses from World War II by January 2021, when more than 405,000 deaths were recorded.
The disease has left few places on Earth untouched, with 6.7 million confirmed deaths worldwide. The real number, including those who have died from COVID-19 and those who have died as an indirect result of the outbreak, is likely closer to 15 million, the WHO said.
Some of the images associated with death from COVID are forever etched in the collective minds of Americans: refrigerated trucks parked outside hospitals overflowing with the dead; intubated patients in sealed intensive care units; exhausted doctors and nurses who battled each wave of the virus.