More than 400,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States since the pandemic began, Johns Hopkins University reported on Tuesday, the eve of the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden, who has made the fight against the coronavirus a priority of his first term.

The bleak threshold was reached only about a month after the US recorded its 300,000th death from the disease, in mid-December, and nearly a year since it announced its first Covid death, at the end of February 2020.

The toll in the world's wealthiest nation remains by far the highest in absolute terms, though some other countries are registering more deaths in proportion to their populations, such as Italy, Britain and Belgium.

After the first Covid-19 death was announced in the US in February 2020 it took about three months to pass the 100,000 mark, during a first wave that hit New York particularly hard.

It took another four months to reach 200,000 fatalities, and just under three months to reach 300,000.

But as cases have surged across the country with the arrival of winter and the holiday season in recent months, deaths have followed suit.

About one American in two believes the virus is currently not at all under control, according to a Washington Post-NBC poll released on Tuesday.

Some 120,000 people are currently in hospital because of Covid-19, according to the Covid Tracking Project, which analyses data from across the country on a daily basis. (AFP)