COVID-19 has now killed more Americans than the Vietnam War

A memorial to a coronavirus victim in Seattle.
(Image credit: Karen Ducey/Getty Images)

A grim milestone was reached on Tuesday evening, as the number of coronavirus deaths in the United States surpassed the number of Americans who were killed in the Vietnam War.

A tally kept by Johns Hopkins University shows the U.S. COVID-19 death toll is now at 58,365, with more than one million confirmed cases. The first known U.S. death from COVID-19 occurred on Feb. 6 in San Jose, California.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.