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Kamala Harris with her husband Doug Emhoff and Joe Biden with his wife Jill Biden in front of the illuminated pool at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington
Photo: Evan Vucci / AP
The evening before their swearing-in ceremony, the future US President Joe Biden and the upcoming Vice President Kamala Harris held a memorial ceremony to remember the hundreds of thousands of corona deaths in the country.
"In order to heal, we have to remember," said Biden on Tuesday evening (local time) at the brief ceremony in the US capital Washington.
"It's important to do that as a nation."
Harris said Americans mourned alone for many months.
That evening the nation mourned together.
She hopes that the country will emerge from the crisis with the knowledge that it will appreciate the simple moments more and open up to one another.
Biden and Harris are due to be sworn in in Washington on Wednesday afternoon.
For the ceremony, which the couple attended with their spouses, 400 lights lit the pool of water in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Lights were turned on on buildings across the country at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the top of the Empire State Building in New York pulsed like a heart in red. Church bells were ringing, and citizens were also called to light a candle.
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Kamala Harris (r.) Said in her speech that that evening the nation mourned together
Photo: TOM BRENNER / REUTERS
On Tuesday, the United States passed another gloomy milestone in the corona crisis: More than 400,000 people have died there since the beginning of the pandemic after being infected with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen.
That comes from new data from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The number of new infections detected every day is still at a high level in the country with around 330 million inhabitants.
In the past few days, more than 3,000 deaths and more than 200,000 new infections have been recorded within 24 hours.
In absolute terms, the United States is the country with the highest number of recorded infections and deaths.
More than 24 million infections have been recorded.
Experts assume a high number of unreported cases.
Critics make Donald Trump's crisis management jointly responsible for the devastating numbers.
The outgoing president had downplayed the danger posed by the virus for a long time and called for a rapid return to normal after the lockdown months in the spring.
His successor Biden has made the fight against the deadly pandemic his most pressing task.
Among other things, the democrat wants to massively accelerate the vaccination campaign that has been running for a few weeks.
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cop / dpa / AFP
