The US reaches 600,000 Covid-19 deaths as a new, dangerous variant is on the rise

The US reached another sobering milestone in the Covid-19 pandemic, with 600,000 lives lost to the disease as of Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

While daily deaths have decreased in recent months, hundreds of Americans are still dying every day from the disease that's largely preventable by vaccines.

Over the past week, the average number of Covid-19 deaths each day was 343, according to data Monday from Johns Hopkins.