The United States surpassed 700,000 COVID-19 deaths on Friday, just as the Delta Variant outbreak had started to show some signs of slowing down and hospitals were experiencing some relief.  

It took just over 3 months for the US to go from 600,000 to 700,000 deaths, driven by the variant’s rampant spread through unvaccinated Americans. 

This milestone is especially frustrating to public health leaders and medical professionals on the front lines because vaccines have been available to all eligible Americans for nearly six months and the shots overwhelmingly protect against hospitalisations and death. An estimated 70 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated, providing kindling for the variant.

“You lose patients from COVID and it should not happen,” said Debi Delapaz, a nurse manager at UF Health Jacksonville who recalled how the hospital was at one point losing eight patients a day to COVID-19 during the summer surge. “This is something that should not happen.”

However, on the brighter side, there are signs of improvement. The tally for those currently hospitalised has plummeted from 93,000 in early September to nearly 75,000. 

.New cases are on the downswing at about 112,000 per day on average, a drop of about one-third over the past 2 1/2 weeks. 

Deaths, too, appear to be declining, averaging about 1,900 a day versus more than 2,000 about a week ago.

The easing of the summer surge has been attributed to more mask wearing and more people getting vaccinated. The decrease in case numbers could also be due to the virus having burned through susceptible people and running out of fuel in some places.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, on Friday, said, “It’s good news we’re starting to see the curves” coming down. “That is not an excuse to walk away from the issue of needing to get vaccinated.”

“If you’re not vaccinated or have protection from natural infection, this virus will find you,” warned Mike Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

With Inputs from Associated Press