U.S. Covid death toll has topped 600,000 although new cases are declining

Covid has claimed more than 600,000 lives in United States Even though cases and deaths from the disease are down as more people are vaccinated, hundreds of deaths are reported daily. NBC News

More than 600,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States, a grim reminder that even though cases are down as more people are vaccinated, the pandemic is not over.

As of Thursday evening, the country had seen at least 600,040 Covid-19 deaths, according to a count of reports by NBC News. More than 33.4 million cases have been recorded in the U.S.

The death toll crossed the 500,000 mark Feb. 21, according to NBC News' count.

The numbers of newly identified cases of Covid-19 and deaths have decreased as more people have gotten vaccinated.

But hundreds of deaths from the disease are reported in the U.S. nearly every day (on Sunday and Monday, which was a holiday weekend, the reported deaths were more than 150 each day, according to NBC News' count).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a summary late last week that the numbers of cases and deaths had dropped to their lowest levels in almost a year.

The agency said at the time that the number of tests that came back positive for the disease over the previous seven days was below 3 percent, one of the lowest rates since widespread testing began. ...