COVID-19 cases as it prepares to mark a staggering half million deaths this week, nearly a year after the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the country with duelling public health and economic crises.While the number of COVID-19 cases fell for the fifth straight week and officials scrambled to inoculate the population, the nation prepared to soon reach 500,000 deaths from the highly infectious respiratory disease.“It’s nothing like we’ve ever been through in the last 102 years since the 1918 influenza pandemic… It really is a terrible situation that we’ve been through — and that we’re still going through,” Dr.
Anthony Fauci, White House COVID-19 medical adviser and the nation’s top infectious disease official, told CNN’s “State of the.