New York City Holds a 'COVID-19 Day of Remembrance'

New York City held a 'COVID-19 Day of Remembrance' on Sunday, one year to the date of the city's first coronavirus death.

The coronavirus has taken the lives of more than 30,000 NYC residents since then, one of the most devastated cities in the country.

The memorial was held virtually and featured the faces of those who have died projected on to the Brooklyn Bridge.

'Every morning, the first thing I see is a list,' Mayor Bill de Blasio said during the ceremony. 'And there are numbers on it. But what it really means, is how many people we lost. Today that number is more than 30,000. It’s a number we can barely imagine.'

'Every single one of them. Everyone we’ve lost — what they did goes on. What they contributed, what they created, the love they gave goes on,' de Blasio continued.

He mentioned that World War II, the Vietnam War, Sept. 11 and Superstorm Sandy took less combined lives in New York City than COVID-19.

'We come here today to remember the many, some of whom we never met, all of whom we must never forget,' said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik.

A personal tribute was also shared by Carolina Juarez Hernandez, who lost her father to COVID-19.

'When security stopped me, I didn’t think to hug him goodbye,' she said about her father being admitted to the hospital.

'I wanted to keep his spirit up. So I just said, 'I'll talk to you later.' To this day, I regret not giving him that hug. Because I never got to see him in person again.' 

The first positive coronavirus case in New York City came on March 2, 2020, though the virus was likely circulating before then.

According to the New York Post, the first COVID-19 death in the city was an 82-year-old woman who died in Brooklyn on March 14, 2020 at the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center.

It was also the first known COVID-19 death in the state of New York. Another death happened the same day.

Since then, 30,258 people have perished from the disease in New York City, which has infected more than 777,000 people in the city.

NBC New York reports that the New York Philharmonic performed to open the ceremony, which included a poetry reading from the city's youth poet laureate.

According to ABC 7, tributes were also held on Sunday at Lincoln Center, which included candles burning and the iconic fountain lights outside going off for 30 minutes.

The coronavirus remains a daily threat, especially as new variants gain publicity across the city.

So far, 712,251 New York City adult residents are fully vaccinated and 1,481,930 adults, or 22 percent of the adult population, has received at least one vaccine.

Still, on Saturday there were 66 new deaths and over 2,000 new cases in the city. 

In the United States, over 29.43 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-10, with 534,880 deaths since the pandemic began.

This article has been adapted from its original source.