All boroughs except for the Bronx, which has the second-lowest full vaccination rate among the five, are now considered medium COVID alert areas by the CDC. NBC New York’s Andrew Siff reports.
Americans can order more free COVID tests from the government by mail. It's the third round of at-home tests offered to U.S. households.
The newest distribution of free COVID tests will be shipped to homes in two packages of four, according to the U.S. Postal Service. The previous two rounds, offered in January and March, sent out four tests each.
As of Monday, all eight tests can be ordered at home through COVIDTests.gov or special.usps.com/testkits.
Anyone needing additional assistance ordering tests can call 1-888-720-7489.
1 Million Americans Die From COVID
The Centers from Disease Control and Prevention on Monday confirmed one million Americans have died from COVID-19, a once-unimaginable figure that only hints at the multitudes of loved ones and friends staggered by grief and frustration.
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Three out of every four deaths were people 65 and older. More men died than women. White people made up most of the deaths overall. But Black, Hispanic and Native American people have been roughly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as their white counterparts.
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Most deaths happened in urban areas, but rural places — where opposition to masks and vaccinations tends to run high — paid a heavy price at times.
The death toll less than 2 1/2 years into the outbreak is based on death certificate data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. But the real number of lives lost to COVID-19, either directly or indirectly, as a result the disruption of the health care system in the world's richest country, is believed to be far higher.
The U.S. has the highest reported COVID-19 death toll of any country, though health experts have long suspected that the real number of deaths in places such as India, Brazil and Russia is higher than the official figures.
The U.S. is averaging about 300 COVID-19 deaths per day, compared with a peak of about 3,400 a day in January 2021. New cases are on the rise again, climbing more than 60% in the past two weeks to an average of about 86,000 a day — still well below the all-time high of over 800,000, reached when the omicron variant was raging during the winter.
