March 11 marked a year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.
Sara Bareilles
commemorated the grim milestone by
performing her inspirational 2013 hit “Brave
” to salute those who helped combat COVID-19 on the front lines — as well as the vaccine researchers who raced to find a cure.
The Grammy winner was part of a virtual summit held by nonprofit The 19th to help mark the pandemic’s anniversary.
Bareilles, when introducing her song while sitting by the piano, said her performance aimed “to celebrate and say thank you to our front line workers and our vaccine researchers who have worked so, so, so hard to help us all weather the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“Words cannot express the gratitude that we all feel to your heroic efforts to help us all get through this, so I will attempt to say ‘Thank You’ with a song,” she sweetly concluded before breaking into her uplifting rendition.
She closed out the performance by clapping her hands together and expressing to all front line workers, “Thank you so much.”
On March 11, 2020, WHO director
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
announced that there were more than 118,000 cases of COVID-19 across 114 countries. At the time, the novel coronavirus claimed 4,291 lives.
“WHO has been accessing this outbreak around the clock and we’re deeply concerned, both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” he said during the afternoon press briefing. “We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.”
COVID-19 has since infected over 118 million people globally, killing over 2.6 million as of Thursday, according to
data
from Johns Hopkins University.
By Megan Stone
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