United States President Joe Biden has passed an order to lower all flags on US federal buildings to half-mast in order to commemorate the lives lost to the Covid-19 in the country, says media reports.
This follows the US surpassing half a million deaths due to the novel coronavirus. Briefing the press, Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed that this gesture would last five days.
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In an interview with NBC News, Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to US President Joe Biden, said: “It’s terrible. It is historic. We haven’t seen anything even close to this for well over a hundred years, since the 1918 pandemic of influenza.”
According to previous reports, President Joe Biden will mark the US crossing the loss of half a million lives from Covid-19 with a moment of silence and candle-lighting ceremony at the White House.
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The US crossed the half a million mark a month after it recorded 4,00,000 deaths in mid-January. This happened even as the country is witnessing a drop in the infection rate after seeing winter’s massive Covid-19 infection surge. The US continues to be the most affected country by the novel coronavirus, followed by Brazil.