Williams Babalola
United States president, Joe Biden will on Monday, celebrate the lives lost to COVID-19 pandemic, the White House disclosed in a statement on Sunday.
Biden will deliver remarks as well as observe a moment of silence as he marks the grim milestone.
The event, which is set for 6:15 p.m. ET at the White House, will also feature first lady, Jill Biden, Vice President, Kamala Harris and second gentleman, Doug Emhoff.
The ceremony reiterates Biden’s empathetic message to residents of the US as he vows to bring relief to the US by taking proactive decision to ensure that the virus is reduced to the barest minimum in the country.
On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration was working on plans so that President Biden could use his “own voice and platform to take a moment to remember the people whose lives have been lost, the families who are still suffering.”
One day before taking office, Biden, Harris and their spouses held a somber ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the 400,000 lives lost to COVID-19 in the US at the time.
“To heal we must remember,” Biden said at the January event. Harris also spoke briefly at the memorial, noting that “for many months, we have grieved by ourselves. Tonight, we grieve and begin healing together.”
Their message stands in contrast with former President Donald Trump, who frequently defended his administration’s response to the pandemic but rarely expressed grief for the victims.
In September, Trump told Axios on HBO that the US COVID-19 death toll, “is what it is.”
Trump said at that time, “They are dying. That’s true. And you, it is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.”
While COVID-19 cases are trending down and vaccinations are ticking up, the US is struggling to get a handle on the threat posed by new variants. Experts both inside and outside the White House have not been able to substantiate that America is finally clawing its way out of the pandemic, with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, telling CNN Sunday that it’s possible Americans will still need to wear masks in 2022 to protect against the COVID-19, even as the US may reach “a significant degree of normality” by the end of this year.
Dr. Bala Hota, an infectious disease specialist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago said, “This is a race to get the vaccine out there broadly enough and fast enough that it eliminates the chance of spread of even more strains. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
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