The United States has reached 800,000 coronavirus-related deaths, according to a Reuters tally, as the nation braces for a potential surge in infections due to more time spent indoors with colder weather and the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the virus.
The milestone means the US death toll from this one virus now exceeds the entire population of North Dakota.
Even with vaccines widely and freely available, the country has lost more lives to the virus this year than in 2020 due to the more contagious Delta variant and people refusing to get inoculated against Covid-19.
Since the start of the year, over 450,000 people in the United States have died after contracting Covid-19, or 57% of all US deaths from the illness since the pandemic started.
The deaths this year were mostly in unvaccinated patients, health experts say.
Deaths have increased despite advances in caring for Covid-19 patients and new treatment options such as monoclonal antibodies.
It took 111 days for US deaths to jump from 600,000 to 700,000, according to Reuters analysis. The next 100,000 deaths took just 73 days.
Other countries have lost far fewer lives per capita in the past 11 months, according to the analysis.
Among the Group of Seven (G7) wealthiest nations, the US ranks the worst in terms of per capita deaths from Coivd-19 between 1 January and 30 November.
The death rate in the US was more than three times higher than in neighboring Canada and 11 times more than Japan.
Even when the US is compared with a larger pool of wealthy countries with access to vaccines, it ranks near the bottom.
Among the 38 members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the US ranks 30th.
Only Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Colombia, Poland and Slovenia had more Covid-19 deaths per capita. New Zealand had the least.
When compared with the European Union, the US has 1.3 times the per capita deaths reported in the last 11 months than the entire bloc.
Among more than 200 nations and territories tracked, the US ranks 36th.
The US has the highest number of reported total Covid-19 deaths in the world, followed by Brazil and India, according to the tally.
With just 4% of the world's population, the country accounts for about 14% of all reported Covid-19 deaths and 19% of cases worldwide. The country is set to soon surpass 50 million cases.
Mandatory Covid-19 jab is an option, says Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron has said that it was possible the Covid-19 vaccine would eventually be made compulsory in France, but said it was not the priority for now.
Like its European neighbours and countries across the globe, France is scrambling to find ways to contain a fresh surge in the pandemic. France's seven-day average of new infections is at its highest since November 2020.
Asked in an interview with TF1 and LCI television stations if Covid-19 vaccination could become mandatory in France, Mr Macron said: "This hypothesis exists."
But he quickly added that France was "almost there," in practice. With nearly 90% of eligible people in France already vaccinated, France was not far from the level of take-up that would be achieved by making the jab mandatory, he said.
Mr Macron declined to rule out imposing new restrictions over Christmas, saying "one always needs to be cautious on such issues." He also said he expected hospitals to be under a lot of pressure over the holidays, because of the high number of Covid-19 cases.
France is considering introducing mandatory PCR tests for all travellers entering the country from Britain, where infections linked to the Omicron variant are surging, a French government source told Reuters.
