President Joe Biden will mark the one-year anniversary of coronavirus-related shutdowns in the U.S. this week by delivering the first prime-time address of his presidency, the White House announced Monday.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden will give the address Thursday, which marks exactly 12 months since the U.S. implemented the first restrictions on international travel to curb the spread of COVID-19 in response to the World Health Organization declaring the virus a global pandemic.
“He will 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,” Psaki told reporters in the briefing room.
The time and place for Biden’s address was not immediately known.
On March 11 last year, then-President Donald Trump announced a 30-day ban on some travel into the U.S. from 26 countries in Europe, the first large-scale restriction on normal life taken by the administration to fight the virus.
However, at that point, COVID-19 was already spreading rapidly across the U.S., with several dozen deaths reported.
More than 525,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University, making the U.S. national toll the worst in the world.
After Trump’s March 11 order on travel, it took several more days before states began implementing large-scale closures of non-essential businesses and schools.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom became the first governor in the country to order a statewide stay-at-home order on March 19, 2020.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo followed suit the next day, implementing a similar stay-at-home order for all of New York on March 20, 2020.
It would take nearly another month before face mask mandates and social distancing guidelines became part of the American vernacular.
Public health experts widely believe that if business shutdowns and face mask usage started earlier, thousands of lives could have been saved.
