BIDEN NAMES 13 TO TASK FORCE

Selection shows differentway of confronting pandemic.

■ President- elect Joe Biden announces a new 13- person COVID- 19 advisory task force drawn from the ranks of public health experts and scientists,

Hours after President- elect Joe Biden declared the coronavirus a top priority, the magnitude of his task became starkly clear Sunday as the nation surpassed 10 million cases and sank deeper into the grip of what could become the worst chapter yet of the pandemic.

The nation’sworsening outlookcomes at an extremely difficult juncture: President Donald Trump, who remains in office until January, is openly at odds with his own coronavirus advisers, and winter, when infections are only expected to spread faster, is coming.

In a victory speech Saturday night, Biden said he was quickly focusing his attention on the pandemic, including plans Monday to announce a task force of coronavirus advisers.

He named Dr. Rick Bright, a former top vaccine official in the Trump administration who submitted a whistleblower complaint to Congress, as a member of a COVID- 19 panel to advise him during the transition, officials announced Monday morning.

Bright, whowas ousted as the head of a federal medical research agency, told lawmakers that officials in the government had failed to heed his warnings about acquiring masks and other supplies. He said that Americans died from the virus because of the administration’s failure to act, telling a House panel, “Lives were endangered, and I believe lives were lost.”

Biden’s decision to put Bright on his advisory panel is intended to send a signal that the incoming administration intends to confront the virus — which is surging in more than half of the country — in very different ways than did Trump, who sought to largely push responsibility onto states.

In a statement, Biden said that “dealing with the coronavirus pandemic is one of the most important battles our administration will face, and I will be informed by science and by experts.”

Biden had already revealed the three co- chairs of the panel: Dr. Vivek Murthy, a surgeon general under former President Barack Obama, who has been a key Biden adviser for months and is expected to take amajor public role; David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration for the first President George Bush and President Bill Clinton; and Dr. Marcella Nunez- Smith, a professor of public health at Yale University.

OnMonday, officials said the 13- member panel would also include Dr. Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist and the chair of the Department ofMedical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Emanuel is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, who served in the Obama administration and has been a high- profile advocate of a more aggressive approach to the virus.

The other members of the panel are Dr. Luciana Borio, a vice president at In- QTel; Dr. Atul Gawande, a professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Dr. Celine Gounder, a clinical assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine; Dr. Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; Loyce Pace, executive director and president of Global Health Council; and Dr. Robert Rodriguez and Dr. Eric Goosby, both professors at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.