The US on Monday reached more than 300,000 deaths from COVID-19, data shows.
The figure amounts to nearly one-fifth of the world’s total death count from the virus, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
Between late September and mid-November, the stateside tally had jumped from 200,000 to 250,000.
It has rapidly accelerated since then — climbing to 300,000 in less than half of that time.
The US has the 11th-highest number of total COVID-19 deaths per capita — or a rate of about 886 fatalities per 1 million people, according to Statista.
Despite the hope from a new COVID-19 vaccine, virus-related deaths are expected to continue to soar throughout the winter months.
“The way the number of infections has been growing so fast, it’s hard to believe we won’t be at half a million deaths,” Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectious diseases expert at the University of California-Berkeley, told USA Today.
To date, there have been more than 16 million confirmed cases throughout the nation.
