Covid-19 toll in US surpasses 1918 pandemic deaths

The U.S.’s Covid-19 pandemic has surpassed the number of dead in the 1918 influenza pandemic as soon as Monday, a milestone many experts say was avoidable after the arrival of vaccines.

The U.S. has reported 675,446 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University data -- more than the 675,000 that are estimated to have died a century earlier.

The U.S. hits that deadly mark despite the widespread availability of Covid-19 vaccines, which were developed in record time in a display of the extraordinary advances in medical science in the past century. The inoculations have been passed up by some 70 million eligible Americans, many of them encouraged by Republican politicians and conservative media.