The United States exceeded one million deaths from covid-19The White House announced this Thursday, at a time when the country wants to turn the page despite an increase in cases for a month.
(You might be interested in: United States: gay pride marches return to New York)
In the United States, the most mourning country on the planet due to the pandemic, ahead of Brazil, India and Russia, after several months of remission, a daily increase in cases has been registered for a month.
“Today we reach a tragic milestone: one million American lives lost to
covid-19″, President Joe Biden said in a statement, in which he asked to remain “vigilant” in the face of the pandemic “as much as possible” to save lives.
(You might be interested: Republican leader of Congress, summoned to testify for assault on Capitol Hill)
“A million empty chairs around the dining room table,” Biden said. “Each one is an irreplaceable loss. Each one leaving behind a family, a community and a nation forever changed.”
Biden will speak this Thursday at a virtual world summit on covid which will seek to “redouble” international cooperation against the virus, according to a senior US official.
Europe in turn exceeded two million deaths, reaching “a new devastating stage,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In the United States, the most mourning country on the planet due to the pandemic, ahead of Brazil, India and Russia, after several months of remission, a daily increase in cases has been registered for a month.
The increase occurs in a context in which the mask is no longer mandatory, although its use indoors is advised, and the fourth dose of the vaccine is available only for those over 50 years of age.
Evolution is due to subvariants of omicronmore transmissible than the previous strains although their effects seem less serious, in a country where 66%
of the population is vaccinated (90% in the case of those over 65).
new york effervescence
New York, the economic and cultural capital of the United States and an incredible mosaic of communities and social classes, seems to have regained its legendary effervescence.
New Yorkers, domestic and foreign tourists return to Broadway theaters, photograph themselves under the giant advertising screens of Times Square, climb the statue
of Liberty, ride a float in Central Park, or walk or bike across the Brooklyn Bridge.
The prestigious museums of northern Manhattan have begun to fill up and the elevators to the skyscrapers’ observation decks, which offer unparalleled views of the Big Apple and its surroundings, never stop going up and down.
The attractions began to open progressively in 2021 in this city of 8.4 million soulswhere the traffic has returned to clog its main arteries and the terraces of restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn are once again full.
“We have been waiting for a long time” for this return, says Alfred Cerullo, at the head of
a lobby to encourage business in Manhattan.
“Without a doubt, the energy of the people on the street is felt again,” he assures AFP.
2020 nightmare
The contrast with spring 2020 is striking. Epicenter of the pandemic, the “city that never sleeps” was left empty for weeks, like in a science fiction movie.
Through the immense arteries of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, only the wail of the sirens of the emergency services could be heard, with overflowing hospitals and the morgues forced to store the bodies of the victims in refrigerated trucks.
Janice Maloof-Tomaso, a nurse working in Boston at the time, recalls that many health care workers “couldn’t bear to see death … and many were traumatized and left the profession.”
Some 40,000 New Yorkers have lost their lives since the spring of 2020 and both the island of Manhattan and the gigantic neighboring neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens maintain the stigma of the pandemic.
Without customers for months, thousands of small businesses have closed, their windows still covered by boards or posters from real estate agents with the message “for rent”.
Trader ‘concerned’
Frank Tedesco owns a jewelry store in the affluent neighborhood of Westchester, in the North Bronx.
He tells AFP that he managed to save his business in 2020 thanks to public aid and his savings, but he is “very worried” since “he does not know what is going to happen” and how he could withstand another economic “impact” caused by a possible return of the epidemic.
Traumatized by the nightmare of 2020, New Yorkers remain vigilant.
The mask is still very visible on the street and indoors and is mandatory on transport and in many shows such as the Metropolitan Opera House or theaters.
And telecommuting seems to be here to stay: according to a weekly barometer from the office security company Kastle, the office occupancy rate in New York is around 38%.
The president of the Goldman Sachs investment bank, David Solomon, recognized the 2
May on the CNBC network that the rate of return to face-to-face work reaches 50-60%, compared to 80% before covid.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the figures of the member countries gathered by the World Health Organization (WHO) give a total of 5.4 million deaths from
covid-19 in these two years.
But the WHO affirmed last Thursday that the pandemic caused between 13 and 17 million deaths in the world, from January 2020 to December 2021, around triple the total official balances, showing the devastation of the worst pandemic experienced in the planet for a century.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP.
More world news:
-Cuba: the new crimes on the island after the renewed Penal Code
-Castillo’s thesis, original or plagiarized? This concludes University of Peru
-Venezuela: what the opposition discussed in a ‘secret debate’ in Panama
#United #States #exceeds #tragic #threshold #million #deaths #covid19