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The U.S. death toll from the Coronavirus topped half a million on Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. A new milestone with the virus still a threat even as the rate of vaccinations increase.

More than 2,462,000 people have been killed by COVID-19 worldwide. The total of 511,455 in the U.S. represents a fifth of all deaths that have occurred, in a country which has less than 5 percent of the global population. The number rivals the populations of Atlanta, Georgia and Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s also greater than the population of Miami, Florida or Kansas City, Missouri.

A warning from Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday that Americans could be wearing masks into 2022.

“People decades from now are going to be talking about this as a terribly historic milestone in the history of this country, to have these many people to have died from a respiratory-borne infection,” Fauci said on CNN.

“These are just projections that are estimates and a lot of things can happen to modify that. And that’s the reason why we have got to be careful, because you have variants that you need to deal with. There are so many other things that would make a projection that I give you today, on this Sunday, wind up not being the case six months from now,” Fauci said.

As for North Carolina, 875,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported, along with 10,957 deaths as of Monday afternoon.