The US death toll now stands at 100,276, according to data gathered by Johns Hopkins University, adding some 1,401 new fatalities in the last 24 hours. Just shy of 1.7 million people have been infected by the lethal virus nationwide.

As deaths crossed the 100,000 mark, former Vice President and 2020 Democratic hopeful Joe Biden issued a pre-recorded video response online. While the post was meant to share in the country’s grief, Biden did not miss out on an opportunity to score political points against his electoral rival, President Donald Trump.

“It’s made all the worse by knowing that this is a fateful milestone we should have never reached – that could have been avoided,” he said, citing a study that found up to 36,000 lives could have been saved “if the administration had acted just one week earlier … and did what it had to do.”

Across the aisle, the president and fellow Republicans have also found ways to turn the health crisis to their political favor, rallying the rank-and-file against sweeping containment measures imposed by Democratic governors while launching a rhetorical assault on Beijing over its handling of the pandemic. Earlier this month, Trump vowed to halt US funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), arguing it had a pro-China bias and that it helped Beijing  to “cover up” the coronavirus outbreak, insisting they are both to blame for the crisis. China and the WHO have repeatedly rejected the allegations, saying their response was appropriate and transparent.

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