The number of US deaths linked to Covid-19 has surpassed the toll of Americans killed in the Vietnam War, according to a tracker from the Johns Hopkins University.
The pandemic has killed 58,365 people in the United States, the Baltimore-based university said. According to the National Archives, 58,220 Americans were killed in combat and from other causes such as accidents during years of war in Southeast Asia.
Vietnamese authorities in Hanoi have said in their official account of the war that 1.2 million soldiers, both North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas, were killed. Another two to three million civilians died, officials there say.
In the battle against the coronavirus, the US death toll and number of cases - in excess of one million - far exceeds that of any other country.
Despite the rising death toll, some states have eased restrictions in the face of an economy battered by the pandemic.
With US President Donald Trump's economic adviser forecasting an unemployment rate of more than 16% for April and many Americans chafing under stay-at-home orders, about a dozen states were moving to restart their economies despite a lack of large-scale virus testing.
Public health experts have warned that a premature rollback of social-distancing policies could cause a surge in new infections.
The number of confirmed US coronavirus cases has passed one million - representing a third of the global total - and has doubled in 18 days.
The actual number of US infections is believed to be higher than the confirmed number of cases, with state public health officials cautioning that shortages of trained workers and materials have limited testing capacity, leaving many infections unrecorded.
About 30% of the American cases have occurred in New York state, the epicentre of the US outbreak, followed by New Jersey, Massachusetts, California and Pennsylvania.
The virus was first reported late last year in China and has spread worldwide. The earliest-known US deaths were in February.
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Georgia, at the vanguard of states reopening businesses, permitted restaurant dining for the first time in a month yesterday.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said yesterday he would let the state's stay-at-home order expire and begin reopening businesses including restaurants and retail shops in phases beginning on Friday.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis met with Mr Trump at the White House and said he would make an announcement tomorrow about how to relax restrictions in his state.
Mr DeSantis said he would review his state's task force report before making his announcement.
The governors of other states, including New York, have put off easing restrictions out of concern they might fuel a second wave of infections.
"Everyone is talking about reopening. I get it," said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, adding any decision should not be made based on politics or emotions or in reaction to protests.
"We want to reopen, but we want to do it without infecting more people or overwhelming the hospital system," Mr Cuomo told his daily briefing, adding that his state's death toll had grown by 335 in the last day.
The University of Washington's model, often cited by White House officials and state public health authorities, upwardly revised its projected US coronavirus death toll to more than 74,000 people by 4 August, compared with its previous forecast of 67,000.
The university's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said late yesterday that the number of US deaths caused by the virus was not abating as quickly as previously projected after hitting a daily peak on 15 April with about 2,700.
While most states seem to have passed their peaks in the pandemic, seven - Hawaii, Mississippi, Texas, Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska and North Dakota - may be experiencing their peaks now or in the coming weeks, the model showed.
