'One million empty chairs around the dinner table,' US President Joe Biden said. 'Each an irreplaceable loss. Each leaving behind a family, a community, and a nation forever changed.'
"Today, we mark a tragic milestone," President Joe Biden said in a statement that acknowledged the "unrelenting" pain of bereaved families, and urged Americans to remain vigilant as cases tick back up.
The US leader came to the summit hobbled by Congress' failure to approve $22.5 billion in continued emergency COVID funding, including for the international supply of vaccines, and he warned it was "critical" for lawmakers to keep financing testing, vaccines and treatments. Back in spring 2020, New York City hospitals and morgues overflowed, and the sound of ambulance sirens rang down empty streets as then-president Donald Trump responded chaotically in Washington.
"Without a doubt you feel the energy of the people that are on the streets. It's been a long time coming," Alfred Cerullo, president of a business improvement group in Midtown Manhattan, told AFP. "People have been sitting at home for two years. They want to celebrate and they're entitled to," he told AFP.But the city has a long way to go. Many stores remain empty and only 38 percent of Manhattan workers are in the office on an average weekday, according to Kastle Systems, a security firm that tracks building occupancy.
" the pandemic is not over. So you have a disconnect between what is happening epidemiologically and what's happening in terms of how people are responding," she told AFP.
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