Coronavirus: What's happening in Canada and around the world on Saturday
CBC
The latest:
The Italian city that suffered the brunt of COVID-19's first deadly wave in Europe is dedicating a vivid memorial to the pandemic dead: A grove of trees, creating oxygen in a park opposite the hospital where so many died, unable to breathe.
Bergamo, in northern Italy, is among the many communities around the world dedicating memorials to commemorate lives lost in a pandemic that is nearing the terrible threshold of five million confirmed dead.
Memorial flags, hearts, ribbons and other simple objects have stood in for virus victims, representing lost lives in eye-catching memorials from London to Washington D.C., and Brazil to South Africa.
The collective impact of white flags covering 20 acres on the National Mall in the U.S. capital is one such display, representing the more than 740,000 Americans killed by COVID-19 — the highest official national death toll in the world.
A memorial wall along the River Thames in London similarly conveys the scale of loss, with pink and red hearts painted by bereaved loved ones. Walking the memorial's length without pausing to read names and inscriptions takes a full nine minutes.
The hearts represent the more than 140,000 coronavirus deaths in Britain, Europe's second-highest toll after Russia; like elsewhere in the world, the actual number is estimated to be much higher, at 160,000.
"It shocks people," said Fran Hall, a spokesperson for the group COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice. She lost her husband, Steve Mead, in September 2020, the day before his 66th birthday.
"Every time we are here, people stop and talk to us, and quite often they are moved to tears as they are walking by, and thank us."
In Brazil's capital, relatives of COVID-19 victims planted thousands of white flags in front of Brazil's Congress in a one-day, emotion-laden action meant to raise awareness of Brazil's toll of more than 600,000 deaths, the second-highest in the world.
And in South Africa, blue and white ribbons are tied to a fence at the St. James Presbyterian Church in Bedford Gardens, east of Johannesburg, to remember the country's 89,000 dead: each blue ribbon counting for 10 lives, white for one.
Italy has not dedicated a national monument to its some 132,000 confirmed dead, but it has designated a coronavirus remembrance day. Premier Mario Draghi stood among the first newly planted trees in Bergamo's Trucca Park on March 18, the anniversary of the indelible image of army trucks bringing dead to other cities for cremation after the city's morgue was overwhelmed.
Bergamo's mayor said the city considered proposals for statues or plaques bearing the names of the dead. One was too monumental; the other ignored that so many dead were not officially counted due to lack of testing.
"The Woods of Memory is a living monument, and it immediately seemed to us to be the most convincing, the most emotive and the one that was closest to our sentiments," Bergamo Mayor Giorgio Gori said.
