Biden to mark 500,000 dead from COVID-19 with sunset ceremony Monday

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WASHINGTON __ President Joe Biden will mark the crossing of the United States of 500,000 lives lost to COVID-19 with a minute of silence and a candle-lighting ceremony at the White House.

The nation is expected to take a dark turn on Monday, just over a year after the first confirmed death in the United States from the novel coronavirus.

The White House said Biden will deliver a sunset address to honor those who have lost their lives. He will be joined by First Lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. They will participate in the minute of silence and the lighting ceremony.

A year after the start of the pandemic, the total number of lives lost was around 498,000 on Sunday – roughly the population of Kansas City, Missouri, and just under the size of Atlanta. The figure compiled by Johns Hopkins University exceeds the number of people who died in 2019 from chronic lower respiratory disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, influenza and pneumonia combined.

FILE – In this file photo from February 16, 2021, motorists wait to receive their COVID-19 vaccine at a federally managed vaccination site on the campus of California State University at Los Angeles in Los Angeles. California’s new coronavirus vaccine delivery, tracking and scheduling system will go live on Sunday, February 21, 2021 for 7 million people in a handful of counties as Gov. Gavin Newsom tries to smooth out what has been a confusing and disjointed deployment hampered by limited domestic supply. (AP Photo / Jae C. Hong, file)PA

“This is unlike anything we’ve experienced in the past 102 years since the 1918 influenza pandemic,” top national infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci said on “State of the Union “from CNN.

The worldwide death toll was approaching 2.5 million, according to Johns Hopkins.

Although the tally is based on figures provided by government agencies around the world, the actual death toll is believed to be significantly higher, in part due to inadequate testing and cases inaccurately attributed to other causes early on. .

Despite efforts to administer coronavirus vaccines, a model widely cited by the University of Washington predicts that the death toll in the United States will exceed 589,000 by June 1.

“People will be talking about this decades and decades and decades,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet The Press”.

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