The first death linked to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, occurred in the United States on February 29, 2020. Estimates of the amount of deaths the newly discovered virus would cause were all over the place at the time. Some suggested it was no worse than the seasonal flu, which killed 51,000 people in the United States between 2017 and 2018. Other projections were far more optimistic.

In March of that year, studies attempting to estimate the maximum number of fatalities killed yielded substantially higher figures. According to the CDC, if no measures are done, the country will lose more than 1.5 million people. The death toll was estimated at 2.3 million by an important Imperial College London research.

Now, over two years later, the country has lost 900,000 people. According to Johns Hopkins University, 900,528 people in the United States have died as a result of Covid. Despite a large intervention involving vaccines, masks, lockdowns, and social separation, that figure is less than half of the Imperial College London forecast for 2020. While cases, hospitalizations, and test positivity are on the decline across the country, mortality from the Omicron outbreak are still on the rise, with 2,241 deaths in the last 24 hours alone.

According to the most recent CDC projection of Covid-related mortality, which was released on January 24, the United States will witness 900,000 deaths on Sunday. It peaked around February 12 at almost 17,000 deaths per week, or 2,400 deaths per day. Even when deaths continue to decline, the estimate anticipates that by February 17 or thereabouts, the country would have had another 36,000 Covid-related deaths, bringing the total to almost 937,000. In just two weeks, that would equate to about 40,000 deaths.