News ‘We must not grow numb to such sorrow’: COVID death toll in US reaches 1 million May 17, 2022 Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY Comments Off on ‘We must not grow numb to such sorrow’: COVID death toll in US reaches 1 million About 400,000 Americans have died of COVID since mid-June 2021, when vaccines were widely available. More than 300,000 of them were unvaccinated.