Candlelight ceremony: Biden to celebrate 500,000 Covid-19 deaths Monday

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The event, which is ready for 6:15 pm ET at the White House, will also feature first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Biden will comment on the lives lost before the ceremony.

The ritual reflects the sentimental message that Biden has tried to elicit a U.S. coronavirus response since taking office last month – a departure from his predecessor. On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration was working on plans so that the President could “use his own voice and platform to take a moment to remember the people who have lost their lives, the families who are still suffering. ”

One day before taking office, Biden, Harris and their spouse held a somber reception at the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the 400,000 lives lost to Covid-19 in the U.S. at the time.

“To heal we need to remember,” Biden said at the January event. Harris also spoke briefly at the memorial, noting “for several months, we are saddened by ourselves. Tonight, we mourn and begin to heal together.”

His message stands in the way of former President Donald Trump, who would often defend his administration’s response to the pandemic but would rarely express sympathy for the victims. . In September, Trump told Axios on HBO that the U.S. Covid-19 death toll is, “what is it.”

“They’re dying. That’s true. And you – it’s it,” Trump said at the time. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not doing what we can. It’s under control as much as you can control.”

As coronavirus cases plummet and vaccines mount, the U.S. struggles to handle the threat of new changes. Experts – both inside and outside the White House – are still far from convinced that America is finally digging out of the pandemic, with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, told CNN on Sunday that it is “possible” that Americans will still have to wear masks in 2022 to protect against the crown virus, even as the U.S. ‘reach a “high degree of regularity” by the end of this year.

“This is a race to get the vaccine out there wide enough and fast enough to eliminate the chance of spreading even more layers,” said Dr. Bala Hota, an infectious disease specialist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

This story was updated with additional information Sunday.

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