President Joe Biden honored the more than 500,000 people in the United States who have died of COVID-19, offering words of solace and hope Monday as the nation surpassed a profound benchmark in the fight against the pandemic.

Today we mark a truly grim, heartbreaking milestone: 500,071 dead, said Biden, speaking to the American people from the White House. Thats more Americans who have died in one year in this pandemic than in World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined. Thats more lives lost to this virus than any other nation on Earth.

Johns Hopkins University figures showed Monday that the U.S. had surpassed the bleak mark even as infection rates and fatalities have begun to decline. The pace of the deaths over the past month has been shocking as the nation reels from a spike in cases after the holiday season, even amid the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The last 100,000 deaths occurred in just over a month .