Daily US Times: President Joe Biden has addressed the country as the United States marks 500,000 death toll from Covid-19, the highest toll of any country in the world.
He said: “As a nation, we can’t accept such a cruel fate. We have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow.”
Mr Biden and his wife, vice-president Kamala Harris and her husband then observed a moment of silence outside the White House during a candle-lighting ceremony.
More than 28.1 million Americans have been infected by the virus- another global record and death toll passed half a million mark.
President Biden said: “Today I ask all Americans to remember. Remember those we lost and remember those we left behind.”
The US President ordered all flags on federal property to be lowered to half mast for the next five days.
At the White House, he opened his speech by noting that the number of American deaths from Covid-19 was higher than the death toll from World War One, World War Two, and the Vietnam War combined.
Mr Biden said: “Today we mark a truly grim, heartbreaking milestone – 500,071 dead.”
“We often hear people described as ordinary Americans. There’s no such thing, there’s nothing ordinary about them. The people we lost were extraordinary. They span generations. Born in America, emigrated to America,” he added.
President Biden drew on his own experience with grief – his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in 1972 and one of his sons died from brain cancer in 2015.
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