Biden to ask Americans to wear masks for 100 days
WASHINGTON ( AFP) – US President-elect Joe Biden said that on his first day in office, he would ask Americans to wear masks for 100 days to help reduce the transmission of the virus that is again surging in the country with the world’s highest number of deaths and infections.
“I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask. Just 100 days to mask – not forever,” Biden said in excerpts of an interview with CNN on Thursday.
“And I think we’ll see a significant reduction if that occurs with vaccinations and masking to drive down the numbers considerably.”
The world passed the grim milestone of 1.5 million coronavirus deaths on Thursday as several nations planned to deliver much hoped for vaccines early next year to break the cycle of lockdowns and restrictions.
“I‘m going to issue a standing order that in federal buildings you have to be masked,” Biden said.
He added: “Transportation, interstate transportation, you must be masked, airplanes and busses, et cetera.“
The US posted an all-time high of more than 210,000 new cases in a 24-hour stretch to Thursday evening, meanwhile notching more than 2,900 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
And Italy registered 993 deaths, topping its previous record of 969 earlier in the year when it was the first European country to be affected by the pandemic.
To build trust in vaccines after they are approved, the 78-year-old Biden said he was willing to be vaccinated in public – following up on similar commitments from former US presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Biden also used the interview to say he had asked the government’s top infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci to join his COVID team and serve as a chief medical adviser.
The pandemic is showing little sign of slowing, with more than 10,000 new deaths recorded worldwide every day since Nov. 24 – a rate never reached before, according to an AFP tally.
As the world tires of economically crippling restrictions, attention has turned to the race for a vaccine.
Britain on Wednesday became the first Western country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine for general use, piling pressure on other countries to swiftly follow suit.
But Fauci said Britain “rushed” its approval process. “In all fairness to so many of my UK friends, you know, they kind of ran around the corner of the marathon and joined it in the last mile,” he told CBS news.
He later walked back his comments, saying he had “a great deal of confidence in what the UK does both scientifically and from a regulator standpoint.”