The bells of the Washington cathedral ring for the million deaths from covid

The bells of the Washington National Cathedral tolled 1,000 times on Monday in tribute to the victims of covid, as the United States approaches the threshold of one million deaths related to the pandemic.

The United States is the country that officially registers the highest number of deaths in the world from covid-19, ahead of Brazil, India or Russia, with 995,000 fatalities registered as of Monday by Johns Hopkins University.

The tribute began at 6:00 p.m. (10:00 p.m. GMT) and was broadcast live on YouTube. Each chime represented 1,000 deaths from the pandemic.

The building’s funeral bell had already rung when the United States passed previous symbolic thresholds, such as in September 2020, when it exceeded 200,000 deaths.

“Today, our nation reached a tragic milestone, one million Americans have died from covid-19,” lamented the dean of the cathedral, the Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, before the bells rang.

The United States has been registering a rise in the number of daily cases for several weeks, in a context of lifting the obligation to wear a mask, now simply advised indoors for most of the country.

However, the number of deaths related to the pandemic has decreased in recent months, after the threshold of 900,000 deaths was crossed in February, three months ago.

When the half-million deaths were exceeded in February 2021, US President Joe Biden lamented a balance greater than that of “World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined.”

The covid-19 pandemic left between 13 and 17 million deaths worldwide between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, according to recent estimates by the World Health Organization.

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