Daily US Times: Johns Hopkins University (JHU) data shows US coronavirus death toll has passed 200,000.
More than 6.8 million people are known to have been infected by the coronavirus in the US, more than in any other country.
The US death toll milestone comes amid an increase in cases in several states, including North Dakota and Utah.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said the new death toll was a “horrible thing” and claimed China “should have stopped” the virus.
He also defended his record, claiming that had his administration not taken action, “you could have two million, 2.5 or three million” dead.
JHU reported the new death toll of 200,005 on Tuesday as the university has been collecting US and global coronavirus data since the outbreak began late last year in China. The first case in the United States was confirmed in January.
President Trump’s administration has been repeatedly criticised over its handling of the Covid-19 outbreak.
On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said: “Due to Donald Trump’s lies and incompetence in the past six months, [we] have seen one of the greatest losses of American life in history.”
“With this crisis, a real crisis, a crisis that required serious presidential leadership, he just wasn’t up to it. He froze,” he said.
”He failed to act. He panicked. And America has paid the worst price of any nation in the world,” the former Vice President added.
But on the same day, President Trump said he and his administration had done “a phenomenal job” and gave himself an “A+” for his handling of the pandemic.
Mr Trump said the US was “rounding the corner on the pandemic, with or without a vaccine”.
In recent weeks, North Dakota has seen a sharp rise in coronavirus cases. Officials say there were more than 3,200 active cases in the state as of Monday, while 87 people are in hospital.
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