US coronavirus deaths pass 500,000, as Joe Biden leads nation in mourning
- The president addressed Americans from the White House before marking a moment of silence in front of 500 candles representing the huge toll
- Biden has warned that America’s fatalities could go ‘well over’ 600,000, even as infection rates drop amid a vaccine roll-out
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An emotional President Joe Biden called the milestone of more than 500,000 US deaths from Covid-19 “heartbreaking” on Monday and urged the country to unite against the pandemic.
“I know what it’s like,” Biden said in a national television address, referring to his own long history of family tragedies.
“I ask all Americans to remember, remember those we lost and those they left behind,” Biden said. “I also ask us to act, to remain vigilant, to say socially distant, to mask up, to get vaccinated.”
Biden, accompanied by his wife Jill and Vice-President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, then stood outside the White House to mark a moment’s silence in front of 500 candles representing the huge toll.
A Marine Corps band played Amazing Grace.
Earlier, flags were lowered over the White House and at federal buildings across the country and at embassies around the world. The United States has the world’s highest death toll.
Biden urged Americans to mourn and to remember those lost but also to show determination.
“As a nation we cannot and must not let this go on,” he said.
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“We must end the politics and disinformation that’s divided families, communities,” he said. “We have to fight this together as one people, as the United States of America.”
Unlike his predecessor Donald Trump, who often sought to minimise the disease, Biden has made the pandemic his top priority, simultaneously pushing an aggressive vaccine roll-out and making frequent, public shows of empathy.
It is a strategy that could make or break the Biden presidency, already juggling high-stakes economic challenges and the tense political aftermath of the Trump era.
Biden has warned that the US toll could still go “well over” 600,000.
But signs are also emerging that progress is being made both in the United States and around the world, with infections dropping sharply and vaccine deliveries rising steadily.
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centres for Disease Control, said US deaths are at their lowest since December, with a 39 per cent drop in the latest seven-day average of new daily cases.
Globally, the toll is approaching 2.5 million.
