By LAURAN NEERGAARD, HANNAH FINGERHUT and MARION RENAULT

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 1 in 5 Americans say they lost a relative or close friend to the coronavirus, highlighting the division between heartache and hope as the country itches to get back to normal a year into the pandemic.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research illustrates how the stage is set for a two-tiered recovery. The public’s worry about the virus has dropped to its lowest point since the fall, before the holidays brought skyrocketing cases into the new year.

But people still in mourning express frustration at the continued struggle to stay safe.

“We didn’t have a chance to grieve. It’s almost like it happened yesterday for us. It’s still fresh,” said Nettie Parks of Volusia County, Florida, whose only brother died of COVID-19 last April. Because of travel restrictions, Parks and her five sisters have yet to hold a memorial.

Parks, 60, said she retired from her customer service job last year in part because of worry about workplace exposure, and now she is watching with dread as more states and cities relax health rules.

Only about 3 in 10 Americans are very worried about themselves or a family member being infected with the virus, down from about 4 in 10 in recent months. Still, a majority are at least somewhat worried.

“They’re letting their guard down and they shouldn’t,” Parks said. “People are going to have to realize this thing is not going anywhere. It’s not over.”

COVID-19’s toll is staggering, more than 527,000 dead in the U.S. alone, and counting.

But “it’s hard to conceptualize the true danger if you don’t know it personally,” said Dr. K. Luan Phan, psychiatry chief at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.

For those who lost a loved one, “that fear is most salient in them. They’re going to be a lot more cautious as businesses reopen and as schools start back,” Phan said.

And without that first-hand experience, even people who heeded health officials’ pleas to stay masked and keep their distance are succumbing to pandemic fatigue because “fears tend to habituate,” he said.

Communities of color were hardest hit by the coronavirus. The AP-NORC poll found about 30% of African Americans, like Parks, and Hispanics know a relative or close friend who died from the virus, compared with 15% of white people.

That translates into differences in how worried people are about a virus that remains a serious threat until most of the country — and the world — gets vaccinated. Despite recent drops in cases, 43% of Black Americans and 39% of Hispanics are very or extremely worried about themselves or a loved one getting COVID-19, compared to just 25% of white people. (For other racial and ethnic groups, sample sizes are too small to analyze.)

While vaccines offer real hope for ending the scourge, the poll also found about 1 in 3 Americans don’t intend to get their shot. The most reluctant: Younger adults, people without college degrees, and Republicans.

The hardest-hit are also having the hardest time getting vaccinated: 16% of Black Americans and 15% of Hispanics say they already have received at least one shot, compared to 26% of white people. But majorities in each group want to get vaccinated.

Currently demand for vaccines still outstrips supply, and about 4 in 10 Americans, especially older adults, say the sign-up process has been poor.

John Perez, a retired teacher and school administrator in Los Angeles, spent hours trying to sign up online before giving up. Then a friend found a drive-thru vaccination site with openings.

“When I was driving there for the first shot, I was going through a tunnel of emotions,” the 68-year-old said. “I knew what a special moment it was.”

Overall, confidence in the vaccines is slowly strengthening. The poll found 25% of Americans aren’t confident the shots were properly tested, down somewhat from 32% who expected they wouldn’t be in December, just before the first ones were cleared.

“We were a little skeptical when it was first coming out because it was so politicized,” said Bob Richard, 50, of Smithfield, Rhode Island. But now, he said his family is inclined to get the shots — if they can sort through the appointment system when it’s their turn.

The poll found two-thirds of Americans say their fellow citizens nationwide haven’t taken the pandemic seriously enough.

“The conflict with people who don’t take it serious as I do, it’s disappointing,” said Wayne Denley, 73, of Alexandria, Louisiana.

Early on, he and his wife started keeping a list of people they knew who’d gotten sick. By November, they’d counted nine deaths and dozens of infections. He’d share the sobering list with people doubtful of the pandemic’s toll, yet still would see unmasked acquaintances while running errands.

“I’m glad I wrote them down — it helped make it real for me,” Denley said. “You sort of become numb to it.”

There are exceptionally wide partisan differences. Most Democrats, 60%, say their local communities failed to take the threat seriously enough and even more, 83%, say the country as a whole didn’t either.

Among Republicans, 31% say their localities didn’t take the pandemic seriously enough, and 44% said that of the country. But another third of Republicans say the U.S. overreacted.

The differences translate into behavior: More than three-quarters of Democrats say they always wear a mask around others compared to about half of Republicans.

And the divisions have Phan, the psychiatrist, worried.

“We’ve survived something that we should be grateful for having survived it. How do we repay or reciprocate that good fortune? The only way to do it is to be stronger in the year after the epidemic than before,” he said.

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Neergaard reported from Alexandria, Virginia, and Renault reported from New York. Associated Press journalist John Seewer contributed to this report.

By ALEXANDRA JAFFE

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden laid out an ambitious agenda for his first 100 days in office, promising swift action on everything from climate change to immigration reform to the coronavirus pandemic.

He hits his 50th day in office on Wednesday as his administration eyes a major milestone: final congressional passage of his massive $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package. The bill includes direct payments to millions of Americans and money to help the White House deliver on a number of Biden’s biggest campaign promises, like reopening schools and getting more Americans vaccinated.

Fifty days in, Biden has made major strides on a number of key campaign pledges for his earliest days in office, while others are still awaiting action. Where he stands on some of his major promises:

COMPLETED GOALS

Biden prioritized addressing the coronavirus pandemic during his first weeks in office, and the focus has paid off. He’s on pace to hit his goal of 100 million vaccine doses administered in his first 100 days as soon as the end of next week. The daily rate of vaccinations now averages more than 2 million shots, and more than 75 million doses have been administered since Biden was sworn in.

Biden also took took several early actions that fulfilled pledges on climate policy. He signed an executive order on Inauguration Day that revoked the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, halted development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and ordered the review of Trump-era rules on the environment, public health and science. A Jan. 27 executive order halted new oil and gas leases on federal lands and offshore waters.

Biden also easily delivered on top campaign pledges that involved rolling back Trump administration moves on everything from climate change to immigration. Early on, the Biden administration rejoined the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord, halted construction of the border wall, ended travel restrictions on people from a variety of Muslim-majority countries and created a task force to reunite families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.

On immigration, Biden pledged to deliver a comprehensive reform bill to Congress within his first 100 days, and it was unveiled last month, although Biden already has signaled an openness to a piece-by-piece approach if necessary. Biden also issued an executive order directing the Homeland Security secretary to “preserve and fortify” protections for young immigrants brought to the U.S. by their parents.

Biden also made some early moves to deliver on a pledge to tighten ethical standards in his administration, including a Jan. 20 executive order imposing an ethics pledge on appointees governing activities such as lobbying and taking gifts, which included prohibiting political interference in the Justice Department.

IN PROGRESS

Still other Biden promises remain a work in progress.

Biden’s national COVID-19 strategy pledged to establish 100 new, federally supported vaccination centers across the nation by the end of February. So far, the administration is at about 20 mass vaccination sites run end-to-end by the federal government and staffed by active-duty troops deployed by the Pentagon. Overall, the administration says, at least 441 vaccination sites are now federally supported. Many of those were not new sites, but nearly all have expanded capacity with the additional federal resources.

On immigration, Biden pledged to reverse the “public charge” rule put in place by the Trump administration to discourage immigrants from using public benefits, to streamline the naturalization process and to reform the U.S. asylum system within his first 100 days. An executive order he signed in early February directs the relevant agencies to review those policies and recommend changes within 60 days.

The administration has made some moves to reform the asylum system, including a move by the Department of Homeland Security on Biden’s first day in office to suspend a Trump-era program requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims were under review. But Biden has yet to articulate a plan to manage asylum flows beyond proposing that billions of dollars be spent to address root causes in Central America.

The president has also kept in place pandemic-related powers that allow his administration to immediately expel people at the border without an opportunity to seek asylum. Biden aides have said they have no immediate plans to end the authority, which Trump introduced a year ago using an obscure 1944 public health law.

Biden also promised to end the long-term detention of migrant families. Immigration and Customs Enforcement signaled last week it plans to discontinue the use of one such facility, but ICE will continue to hold families for three days or less at two other facilities in Texas. And the Biden administration is expanding capacity at a number of long-term facilities that hold immigrant children, to address an ongoing surge of unaccompanied minors at the border.

On climate change, Biden pledged to establish enforceable commitments from other nations to reduce emissions in global shipping and aviation and to convene a climate world summit to discuss new and more ambitious pledges to address climate change, within his first 100 days. The U.S. will hold such a summit on April 22, Earth Day.

Reopening America’s schools is one of Biden’s major campaign promises that’s proven tougher to execute, in part because the decision on whether to return to in-person learning is left up to local officials and teachers’ unions. After some back-and-forth over the details of his goal, Biden said last month that his 100-day mission was to have most elementary schools open five days a week for in-person learning.

This month he directed states to prioritize vaccinating teachers and announced he was directing federal resources toward vaccinating teachers in March. The Biden administration hopes that with the passage of the coronavirus relief bill and distribution of millions in aid for schools to improve safety measures, teachers will feel more comfortable returning to in-person learning.

According to Burbio, which tracks school reopening plans, about 47% of kindergarten through 12th grade students have access to in-person school every weekday.

AWAITING ACTION

The Biden administration has yet to take significant action on criminal justice reform, aside from an executive order terminating private prison contracts. Biden pledged to set up a police oversight board within his first 100 days, but there’s been no clear movement in that direction so far.

Other 100-day pledges also awaiting movement: creating a Cabinet-level working group focused on promoting union participation, and ordering an FBI review of issues with gun purchase background checks.

Some of Biden’s 100-day pledges will require congressional action, like his promise to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and increase taxes on corporations. Biden also promised to make passage of the Equality Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity, a priority in his first 100 days. That bill has passed the House but not the Senate.

And some of his promises are waiting on Biden’s Cabinet secretaries to be confirmed by the Senate. On gun control, Biden has said he would direct his attorney general to deliver recommendations to restructure key Justice Department agencies to more effectively enforce the nation’s gun laws. He also pledged to have his secretary of Housing and Urban Development lead a task force to create recommendations for making housing a right for all Americans.

Both his attorney general nominee, Merrick Garland, and his nominee to lead the Housing Department, Rep. Marcia Fudge, are expected to win confirmation this week.