Biden to announce Covid-19 taskforce

AS U.S. SAW A RECORD 130,000 NEW CASES, TEXAS BECAME THE FIRST STATE TO TOP A MILLION COVID-19 INFECTIONS.

Former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy will co-chair a Coronavirus task force that President-elect Joe Biden will announce on Monday as his first major step towards combating the pandemic, his top campaign promise.

The president-elect spoke briefly about this team in his victory speech Saturday. “On Monday, I will name a group of leading scientists and experts as Transition Advisors to help take the Biden-Harris Covid plan and convert it into an action blueprint that starts on January 20 , 2021,” he said. “That plan will be built on a bedrock of science. It will be constructed out of compassion, empathy, and concern.”

Murthy, an Indian American, will co-chair the task force with David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and Dr Marcella Nunez-Smith, a Yale University professor. The team will have 12 members.

The president-elect gave no further details, but multiple news reports named Murthy as co-chair.

The co-chairs of the task force are scheduled to brief Biden on Monday after the members are announced.

The announcement was first reported by Axios.

The US on Saturday reported a record increase in coronavirus cases for a fourth consecutive day with at least 131,420 new infections, bringing the country’s total caseload to about 9.91 million, according to a Reuters tally. Seventeen states reported a record one-day increase on Saturday while 14 states reported record daily numbers of hospitalised patients.

The number of deaths nationwide was more than 1,000 for a fifth consecutive day on Saturday, according to a Reuters tally.

Based on a seven-day average, the US is reporting over 100,000 new cases daily, more than the combined average for India and France, two of the worst affected countries in Asia and Europe.

Texas, which accounts for 10% of total US cases, became the first state to surpass a million coronavirus cases in the US on Saturday, having added 8,000 cases a day on average in the past seven days.

Biden has promised a much more muscular response to the pandemic than he says President Donald Trump has made. The virus has infected 9.7 million people in the US and killed more than 236,000 people. His plan calls for increased testing capacity, funding for businesses and schools to reopen safely and eventually a vaccine distributed equitably and for free.