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 The sundown commemoration came hours before President Donald Trump
was due to leave the White House for the last time and hand over a
country racked by the greatest public health crisis in a century,
economic devastation and violent political upheaval.
Ceremonies spearheaded by Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala
Harris from the base of the Lincoln Memorial marked the federal
government's first official nod to the staggering death toll from
the pandemic.
"To heal, we must remember. It's hard sometimes to remember, but
that's how we heal. It's important to do that as a nation," Biden
said to kick off a tribute that included observances in cities
across the country.
As he spoke, 400 electric lamps lining the sides of the memorial's
Reflecting Pool were illuminated to honor the lives lost, followed
by gospel star Yolanda Adams' performance of the song "Hallelujah,"
then a moment of silence.
Michigan hospital nurse Lori Marie Key sang "Amazing Grace" before
Biden took the podium. After he spoke, about 4 miles (6.5 km) away,
the bells of the National Cathedral tolled 400 times.
"Though we may be physically separated, we the American people are
united in spirit," Harris said before introducing Key. "My abiding
prayer is that we emerge from his ordeal with a new wisdom - to
cherish simple moments, to imagine new possibilities and to open our
hearts just a little bit more to one another."
The United States on Tuesday surpassed 24 million known COVID-19
infections and 400,000 lives lost since the nation's first
documented COVID-19 death in February of 2020, according to a
Reuters tally. The country has averaged more than 200,000 new cases
and 3,220 deaths a day over the past week, and has the highest
COVID-19 death toll in the world. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)
The unrelenting loss of life has placed a particular strain on
medical professionals in the trenches of the pandemic.
"You're just surrounded by all of this horrible illness that you
can't fix - all the time," said Dr Mangala Narasimhan, who oversees
ICU teams for Northwell Health hospitals, New York state's largest
healthcare provider.
"It's really a huge mental toll on the intensive care workforce,
doing this day in and day out for almost a year now," she told
Reuters.
BIDEN'S TOP PRIORITY
Officials from Miami to San Diego planned special lighting displays
of prominent buildings for Wednesday's ceremony.
Among the participating landmarks were the Empire State building in
New York City and the Space Needle in Seattle, Biden's inaugural
committee said. The committee said it was encouraging Americans to
light candles in their windows and churches to ring their bells in a
show of unity.
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 Biden has pledged to make
coronavirus relief a top priority upon taking
office on Wednesday under unprecedented security
measures in the nation's capital.
Many of his policy plans fly in the face of the
Trump administration's approach to the pandemic,
which critics have called disjointed and
ineffectual. Biden's plans include a mask
mandate that would apply to federal properties,
planes and buses and a recommitment to the World
Health Organization after Trump's withdrawal
from the agency. Biden also
faces the daunting task of overseeing the nation's COVID-19 vaccine
campaign, the largest and most complex immunization effort in U.S.
history. He has vowed to vaccinate 100 million Americans in his
first 100 days in office.
States have lamented a lack of funding and support from the federal
government for their role in the campaign, and say supplies are
failing to meet demand among healthcare workers, elderly citizens
and others designated as first in line for vaccines.
The mayors of New York City and San Francisco warned on Tuesday they
expect to run out of vaccine doses this week unless new shipments
arrive. California, which has emerged as the U.S.
epicenter of the pandemic in recent weeks, offered a glimmer of
optimism on Tuesday. State Health Secretary Dr Mark Ghaly said
hospitalization rates were leveling off in a sign that a surge of
cases spurred by the year-end holiday was beginning to ease.
The COVID hospitalizations also have declined nationwide over the
past week, according to data compiled by Reuters.
Steeply rising infections have pushed hospital emergency rooms,
intensive care units, ambulance bays and morgues to overflowing
during the past month, especially in and around Los Angeles. Ghaly
said caseloads are expected to keep rising over the next two weeks
but less quickly as officials had feared, evidence that restrictions
on business and social activities were working.
"There are rays of hope shining through," he said in a briefing with
reporters.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington;
Additional reporting by Heather Timmons in Washington, Maria Caspani,
Barbara Goldberg and Peter Szekely in New York, Sharon Bernstein in
Sacramento, Calif., and Gabriella Borter in Florida; Writing by
Gabriella Borter and Steve Gorman; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and
Sonya Hepinstall)
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