The official United States death toll from COVID-19 has passed 200,000 — by far the highest in the world — as University of Washington researchers warned the U.S. is on track to double that toll by year’s end. In the past 24 hours alone, the U.S. reported nearly a thousand new deaths and over 37,000 new cases — with Minnesota, Montana, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming reporting record levels of infections over the past week.
On Tuesday, the COVID-19 Memorial Project placed 20,000 flags across the National Mall, each one symbolizing 10 U.S. residents who have died of the disease since the first recorded U.S. death in February. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke at a memorial for the dead.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “This was preventable — not all of it, but much of it. And what could be lost in the future is preventable, too, if we embrace science, science instead of politics.”