US marks Memorial Day buoyed by Covid recovery

Tributes resume after 2020 events were curtailed by coronavirus pandemic

People fill the Santa Monica Pier as crowds in the US gather on Memorial Day, a year on from Covid forcing military tributes online. AFP

The US on Monday honoured its war veterans killed in the line of duty, as it emerges from the Covid restrictions that all but put an end to 2020's Memorial Day.

Parades and events were held in localities large and small across the country, many resuming after being cancelled last year as the pandemic hit with full force.

At Arlington National Cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, President Joe Biden delivered a solemn speech honouring the one million Americans killed in service, and challenged the US to carry on that fight by defending its democracy.

“This nation was built on an idea,” Mr Biden said. “We were built on an idea, the idea of liberty and opportunity for all.

"We’ve never fully realised that aspiration of our founders but every generation has opened the door a little wider.

“The struggle for democracy is taking place around the world: democracy and autocracy. The struggle for decency, dignity, just simple decency.”

With restrictions lifting, Americans paid tribute in public gatherings this year and, like last year, they remembered the thousands of veterans who died from Covid.

In Florida, former president Donald Trump joined in remembering the country’s fallen heroes.

“The depth of their devotion, the steel of their resolve and the purity of their patriotism has no equal in human history,” Mr Trump said on his website.

About 30 kilometres north of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, flags bearing the former president's name whipped in the breeze as dozens of boats held a Memorial Day parade along the waters of Jupiter.

Monday’s commemorations were held as new data released by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention showed that new Covid-19 case numbers are plunging and that more than 40 per cent of the US population has been fully vaccinated.

The receding threat from the virus has led most states to reduce or drop most social distancing restrictions.

As of Saturday, the rolling seven-day average of new cases in the US had dropped to 18,913, the CDC said – the first time the rate dipped below 20,000 a day since March 2020.