The United States stood Sunday at the brink of 500,000 COVID-19 deaths as Dr Anthony Fauci warned that Americans could be wearing masks into 2022 despite infections falling 77 per cent over the last six weeks. A year into the pandemic, the running total of lives lost was about 498,000 — roughly the population of Kansas City, Missouri, and just shy of the size of Atlanta. The figure compiled by Johns Hopkins University surpasses the number of people who died in 2019 of chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer's, flu and pneumonia combined.