The body of a deceased person is seen on a stretcher during a transfer at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, US, April 28, 2020. Brendan McDermid, Reuters
WASHINGTON - The number of US deaths from the novel coronavirus has surpassed the toll of Americans killed in the Vietnam War, the Johns Hopkins University tracker showed Tuesday.
The pandemic has killed 58,365 people in the United States, the Baltimore-based university said. According to the National Archives, 58,220 Americans were killed in combat and from other causes such as accidents during years of war in Southeast Asia.
Vietnamese authorities in Hanoi have said in their official account of the war that 1.2 million soldiers, both North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas, were killed. Another 2 to 3 million civilians died, officials there say.
In the battle against the coronavirus, the US death toll and number of cases -- in excess of one million -- far exceeds that of any other country.
Communist Vietnam, a neighbor of China, has recorded 270 cases and no deaths, Johns Hopkins said.
More details to follow.
© Agence France-Presse
COVID, COVID-19, COVID updates, COVID latest, ncov, health, disease, virus, pandemic, coronavirus, COVID US, COVID US deaths