U.S. coronavirus death toll reaches 150,000

The Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center on Wednesday confirmed the United States death toll from the pandemic has reached 150,000. Lisa Lee, an infectious disease expert at Virginia Tech University, told The Wall Street Journal the figure is "staggering" and equivalent to "losing a medium-sized city."

Deaths and infections are particularly concentrated in the South and West in highly populated states like Texas, California, and Florida. The latter two states just reported 216 and 197 deaths, respectively, on Wednesday, marking the largest one-day increase since the pandemic began for both. Overall, 21 states are currently experiencing outbreaks that put them in the so-called "red zone," 28 are in the "yellow zone," and Vermont stands alone in the "green zone."

Despite the grim milestone, though, there are signs that cases are leveling off or declining in several parts of the country, suggesting that fatalities, which generally show up in the data a couple of weeks after infections, will hopefully begin a downward trend soon, as well.

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