The United States’ covid-19 death tally is now the highest in the world, eclipsing Italy’s toll on Saturday, despite experts calling the U.S. figure “an underestimation.”

The U.S. toll is now 19,424, with nearly half a million confirmed cases, surpassing Italy’s total of 18,849. Italy has 147,577 infected with the virus.

Despite the country’s large elderly population, experts had previously forecast that Italy’s staggering toll wasn’t an outlier so much as a preview of what other countries could expect. The steady climb of cases has slowed, and the Mediterranean country is now preparing to reopen.

Friday marked the highest single-day total yet with at least 2,056 people reported dead from complications related to covid-19 in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to a Washington Post tally. The virus claimed about 1,900 lives in the United States each of the past three days.

The country’s first death from the virus was reported on Feb. 29 in Washington state. Less than a month later, 1,000 people coronavirus-related deaths had been recorded across the nation.

Experts and government leaders predict the apex is still looming and may come mid-April.

Experts fear the toll is worse than the numbers provided by Johns Hopkins University, given a lack of transparency in China and elsewhere, and the difficulty of confirming cause of death, especially outside hospitals.

In addition, a lack of widespread testing has likely contributed to an undercount of U.S. deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the virus is confirmed in a laboratory test. It’s not known how accurate testing is.