World record: the United States reached more than 100 million cases of Covid
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The United States is the first country to record 100 million cases of COVID-19. Experts say it's likely underestimated
The United States has officially registered more than 100 million cases of Covid.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data updated late Thursday, the US reached the 1 million Covid case milestone on December 21.
This makes the United States the first nation to report total Covid cases of more than 1 million , data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center shows.
Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital and a contributor to ABC News, told ABC News that while the 100 million mark is momentous, it's also an undercount.
“Obviously, it is a milestone that signifies the large amount of transmission that has occurred around this virus and the population burden that we have faced,” Brownstein said. “At the same time, we recognize that the reported cases are an absolute undercount, from the start of the pandemic, where testing was non-existent, to the shift to home testing, where a significant proportion of cases went unreported.”
Covid cases are likely to go unreported for a number of reasons, including people testing at home and failing to report their results to public health officials, not knowing where to get tested, or people choosing not to get tested at home. absolute.
In fact, between February 2020 and September 2021, the CDC estimates that only one in four COVID-19 infections were reported and there were probably around 146 million infections during this time.
The CDC advises that Americans stay up-to-date with their COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, as well as their flu shots.