COVID-19: 600,000 American lives have now been lost to the pandemic

death toll from COVID-19 topped 600,000 on Tuesday, even as the vaccination drive has drastically brought down daily cases and fatalities and allowed the country to emerge from the gloom and look forward to summer.

Worldwide, the COVID-19 death toll stands at about 3.8 million.

With the advent of the vaccine in mid-December, COVID-19 deaths per day in the U.S.

have plummeted to an average of around 340, from a high of over 3,400 in mid-January.

Cases are running at about 14,000 a day on average, down from a quarter-million per day over the winter.

President Joe Biden acknowledged the approaching milestone Monday during his visit to Europe, saying that while new cases and deaths are dropping dramatically in the U.S., "there's still too many lives being lost," and "now is not the time to let our guard down.".

The figure stands at just under 65%.

was averaging about 1 million injections per day, down from a high of about 3.3 million a day on average in mid-April, according to the CDC.