Covid-19 Mar 18, 2021 05:59 PM By Kaiser Health News A new grave in Michigan, May 2020. anthroview / Flickr Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact Now that the coronavirus has been in the United States for roughly a year, new numbers are revealing the scale of covid-19’s impact on American health: Covid has become the country’s third-leading cause of death, and could be on its way to outpacing cancer. This story also ran on PolitiFact. As of Wednesday afternoon, 528,603 Americans had died of the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University data. And a closely watched model from researchers at the University of Washington projects that this number will rise past 575,000 by June 1.