US coronavirus deaths top Vietnam War toll: tracker

[WASHINGTON] The number of US deaths from the novel coronavirus has surpassed the toll of Americans killed in the Vietnam War, the Johns Hopkins University tracker showed on Tuesday.

The pandemic has killed 58,365 people in the United States, the Baltimore-based university said. According to the National Archives, 58,220 Americans were killed in combat and from other causes such as accidents during years of war in Southeast Asia.

Vietnamese authorities in Hanoi have said in their official account of the war that 1.2 million soldiers, both North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas, were killed. Another two to three million civilians died, officials there say.

In the battle against the coronavirus, the US death toll and number of cases - in excess of one million - far exceeds that of any other country.

Communist Vietnam, a neighbour of China, has recorded 270 cases and no deaths, Johns Hopkins said.

AFP