People walk past a memorial installation for those who died of COVID-19 outside Green-Wood Cemetery in New York, the United States, on June 14, 2021. The United States reached the grim milestone of 600,000 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. With the national case count topping 33.4 million, the death toll across the United States rose to 600,012 as of 12:22 p.m. local time (1622 GMT), according to the CSSE data. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

NEW YORK, June 15  -- The United States reached the grim milestone of 600,000 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

With the national case count topping 33.4 million, the death toll across the United States rose to 600,012 as of 12:22 p.m. local time (1622 GMT), according to the CSSE data.

California topped the national death toll list, standing at 63,191. New York reported the country's second largest deaths of 53,558, followed by Texas with 51,940 deaths and Florida with 37,265 deaths, the CSSE tally showed.

States with more than 20,000 fatalities also include Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia, Michigan and Ohio.

The United States remains the nation worst hit by the pandemic, with the world's highest caseload and death toll, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the global cases and over 15 percent of the global deaths.

Last year, U.S. COVID-19 deaths hit 100,000 on May 27, topped 200,000 on Sept. 22, and reached 300,000 on Dec. 14. The number surged to 400,000 on Jan. 19, 2021 and passed more than half a million on Feb. 22, 2021.

It took nearly four months for the national death toll to climb from 100,000 to 200,000, less than three months to jump from 200,000 to 300,000 and only more than one month to soar from 300,000 to 400,000 and from 400,000 to half a million, respectively.

U.S. COVID-19 deaths increased at a slower pace from 500,000 to 600,000 in nearly four months, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.