Donald Trump, president when the pandemic hit, was criticized for his slow response, how he played down the scale of the coming disaster, and his contribution to misinformation surrounding the pandemic in the weeks and months to come.
He also launched "Operation Warp Speed," pumping billions of dollars of public money into vaccine research, allowing pharmaceutical companies to conduct expensive clinical trials.
The result? The first vaccines in the U.S. -- from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna -- were available in mid-December, less than a year after the first cases were reported in China.
In the politically polarized United States, few social issues have been as divisive as masks or vaccines.
Between progressives defending physical distancing, masks and inoculations, and conservatives rejecting any intrusion into their individual freedoms, the battle raged all the way to the top, where Trump only reluctantly wore a mask while his successor Joe Biden scrupulously followed protocols and championed vaccinations.
From schools to airplanes to businesses, the mask issue has led to numerous clashes, sometimes even resulting in violence.
The latest development is that in April, a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana lifted the requirement to wear masks on public transport, a decision that the federal government has appealed.
More than two years since the pandemic reached the United States, the rate of infection is rising yet again, due to sub-variants of the very contagious variant Omicron.
From a low of 25,000 daily cases in March, the country now has a seven-day daily average of some 78,000 cases, according to the main U.S. health agency.
