As U.S. COVID-19 death toll surpassed 900,000 on Friday, much of the blame has fallen on individuals despite vast income inequality and vaccine accessibility issues, The Guardian has reported.

The death toll would be equivalent to population of the 15th most populous city in the United States, more than San Francisco, Washington, D.C. or Boston, said the report.

The country also has the highest death rate of any wealthy country, with half of the deaths occurring after vaccines became available, it noted.

"The U.S. has never responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in a sustained, proactive way as a unified nation. Instead, much of the responsibility – and blame – has fallen on individuals," said the report. "In a country with vast income inequality, poor health and sharp political divides, the results have been grim."

"All of those factors put people at higher risk of COVID death," Megan Ranney, emergency physician and academic dean of public health at Brown University in the U.S., was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

"The first and most obvious (issue) is our vaccination and booster rate,"said Ranney. "Our rate of vaccination, period, is lower than in most other high-income countries, and our booster rate is lower as well. And as ample CDC data proves, vaccines and boosters are tremendously effective at protecting against death, even with Omicron."

Vaccinations in the United States particularly have lagged, when compared with other wealthy countries, the newspaper said, pointing out that although the country has sufficient vaccine supply, less than two-thirds people in the U.S. are vaccinated, with just 48 percent of those receiving a booster shot.

It also noted that the health system in the country was already in danger as it began to be battered by "wave after wave" of the COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is just trying to mimic other countries' return to normal, in spite of a obviously different situation with its high hospitalizations and deaths, it added.

As a recent report in the Lancet has observed, said the paper, one predictor of COVID-19 deaths by country is trust in government, and countries with lower levels of trust in government had higher rates of cases and deaths.

National leaders in the United States are unable to mandate precautions, like masks or vaccines, for the entire country, with responsibilities largely falling instead to state and local leaders, said The Guardian. 

(With input from agencies)