NEW YORK, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. COVID-19 deaths surpassed 200,000 on Tuesday, the highest in the world so far, which has been described by U.S. health experts as "unfathomable" and "sobering."
"It is completely unfathomable that we've reached this point," Jennifer Nuzzo, a public health researcher of Maryland-based Johns Hopkins University, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying eight months after the epidemic broke out in the world's largest economy.
Accounting for less than 5 percent of the global population, the United States has more than 20 percent of the world's deaths from COVID-19. Its current nationwide tally of fatalities, roughly the size of Salt Lake City's population, is equal to a 9/11 terrorist attack every day for 67 days.
"The idea of 200,000 deaths is really very sobering, in some respects stunning," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, told CNN.
Yet the number of deaths is still increasing at a rate of nearly 770 daily on average, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The 200,000 threshold was calculated by Johns Hopkins based on data from state health authorities. However, the real death toll is thought to be much higher as many COVID-19 deaths were ascribed to other causes, especially in the early stage of the outbreak.
"All the world's leaders took the same test, and some have succeeded and some have failed," Dr. Cedric Dark, an emergency physician at Baylor College of Medicine in hard-hit Houston, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. "In the case of our country, we failed miserably." Enditem
