US Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris said that 220 million people died from COVID-19 in the United States.
Harris mistakenly said “million” instead of “thousand.”
After the Democratic National Convention in August 2024, US Vice President Kamala Harris, the party's presidential nominee, reportedly said that 220 million people in the US had died from COVID-19, videos circulated on social media platforms, including X (archive):
The footage also appeared a few more times on X, TikTok and Instagram, and readers brought it to our attention. The video first appeared on Facebook during the 2020 presidential campaign, in which Harris was President Joe Biden's running mate. People pointed out that Harris couldn't count, as the US population at the time was about 330 million, which meant two-thirds of the country's residents would have died.
We found the source of the video on C-SPAN. It was a recording of a campaign event held by Harris in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 21, 2020, about two weeks before the 2020 election. Here's its full description:
Twenty-five minutes and 37 seconds into the video, Harris gave a detailed description of the public health crisis in the US due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Her full quote is as follows (emphasis ours):
We are talking about over 220 million deaths in the last few months. You know, it breaks your heart. Many people who were alone in their final days on earth without their loved ones, without someone to be with them in the hospital and hold their hand, because of the nature of the virus. We're looking at over 8 million people in our country who have been infected with the virus with countless long-term effects. We're looking at over 30 million people who have had to file for unemployment because of the economic impact of this virus.
Three days later, on October 24, 2020, in Cleveland, Ohio, he repeated the same claim.
So Snopes can confirm that the videos are authentic and that Harris cited that number. Looking at statistics compiled by Our World in Data, we were able to verify that global deaths due to COVID-19 had reached 1.2 million on October 21, 2020, including 350,093 deaths in North America:
When looking at the cumulative deaths in Our World in Data for the US alone, it became clear that Harris said “million” rather than “thousand” – the number of deaths in the United States had already surpassed 220,000 on the day she said this:
