“In the evening, the President will deliver remarks on the lives lost to COVID-19 in the Cross Hall. The First Lady, Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Second Gentleman, Doug Emhoff, will be in attendance,” the White House said in a press release.
After a brief address by the president, a moment of silence will be held, followed by a candle-lighting ceremony at sundown, reports Axios.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the United States has recorded 499,056 deaths from COVID-19 as of Monday morning. Globally, the U.S. has reported the most deaths due to the coronavirus out of any other country.
The current death toll of nearly 500,000 represents more than six average NFL stadiums worth of victims — in the days when carefree crowds could still pack into mass sporting events. Each is a grandparent, parent, son, daughter or sibling taken in a horrendous death toll, according to CNN.
“It’s terrible, it’s really horrible,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases specialist, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
“People decades from now are going to be talking about this as a terribly historic milestone in the history of this country, to have these many people to have died from a respiratory-borne infection,” Fauci said.
Declaring victory too fast is unwise and could create the conditions for existing and evolving mutations of the virus to find a foothold and lengthen the pandemic, say public health officials. Three influential medical associations on Sunday issued a warning that despite signs of hope, the challenges from Covid-19 remain serious.
“With new, more contagious variants of the virus circulating throughout the US, now is not the time to let your guard down and scale back on the measures that we know will work to prevent further illness and deaths,” the American Medical Association, American Hospital Association, and American Nurses Association said in a statement.
