Joe Biden will deliver prime-time address to the nation Thursday to discuss the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 and the 'grave loss' Americans have suffered
President Joe Biden is planning to deliver a prime-time address to the nation on Thursday where he will speak about the grave losses Americans have suffered amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The speech will come a year after the World Health Organization officially labeled the outbreak a pandemic. Since that time, more than 500,000 Americans have died of the virus.
The White House announced the speech as it also revealed Biden will scrap a planned Wednesday trip to Baltimore to tour a vaccine plant. Instead, Biden will meet the heads of Johnson & Johnson and Merck, who are partnering to ramp up production of J&J's new vaccine.
President Joe Biden watches as a medical worker prepares a COVID-19 vaccine as he visits a Veterans Affairs (VA) COVID-19 vaccination center in Washington, DC, USA, on 08 March 2021. He will address the nation Thursday to mark the one year anniversary of the pandemic
Biden will deliver the speech from the White House to 'discuss the many sacrifices the American people have made over the last year and the grave loss communities and families across the country have suffered,' White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Monday's White House press briefing.
The timing gives Biden the opportunity to point not only to losses, but to some promising developments. As the new head of the Centers for Disease Control said at a briefing Monday, Americans are now getting more than 2 million coronavirus shots each day.
President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden commemorate the grim milestone of 500,000 U.S. deaths from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) during a moment of silence and candle lighting ceremony at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 22, 2021
A body wrapped in plastic is unloaded from a refrigerated truck and handled by medical workers wearing personal protective equipment due to COVID-19 concerns, Tuesday, March 31, 2020, at Brooklyn Hospital Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York
J&J just delivered a substantial batch of millions of vaccine doses, with more coming on line after a pause of a few weeks.
The speech also will likely follow House action on $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill. A House vote could come Tuesday following Senate passage over the weekend.
'We are starting to turn a corner, ' CDC chief Rochelle Walensky, echoing a comment repeatedly made by former President Trump as deaths and infections mounted.
Still, she noted, a seven-day rolling average of 59,000 Americans are becoming infected each day, an amount Dr. Anthony Fauci warned is an unacceptable plateau.
That is a 12 percent decline from the average 14 days earlier.
On Sunday, a total of 40,340 new infections were reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, which is a 28 percent decline from the 56,044 cases recorded just two weeks ago.
That is the lowest figure seen since October 5, before a spike around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Biden said Monday he was eager to sign the relief bill that passed on a party-line vote. 'As soon as I get it,' he told reporters during a trip to the Washington DC VA Medical Center, in an event pegged to vaccine distribution.
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