BIDEN SETS UP TASKFORCE AS US COVID CASES HIT 10 MILLION
▶ President-elect wants a plan to deal with pandemic ‘built on a bedrock of science’, after record number of infections
President- elect Joe Biden declared his intention to overhaul the US response to Covid- 19, after a record number of new cases were recorded.
Mr Biden is set to announce a 12-person coronavirus task force today, sources told CNN.
His campaign said the task force would be led by former surgeon general Vivek Murthy, Yale University’s Dr Marcella Nunez-Smith and former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler.
They will come up with a plan “built on a bedrock of science”, Mr Biden told a crowd in Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday.
He said he would “spare no effort, or commitment, to turn this pandemic around”.
Worldwide Covid- 19 cases passed the 50 million mark yesterday, and the US continues to be the country with the most cases – more than 10 million.
It also accounts for 243,343 of the world’s 1,259,346 registered deaths from the disease.
The second wave is hitting the US hard, and it recorded more than 100,000 new cases four days in a row from Wednesday. More than 130,000 cases were recorded on Friday.
The virus appeared to drop off the agenda as the country prepared for the presidential election.
President Donald Trump’s rallies, with few masks and little social distancing, led to 30,000 additional confirmed cases and were likely to have led to more than 700 deaths, Stanford University economists estimated.
As part of his campaign, during which he pilloried Mr Trump for inaction on the crisis, Mr Biden said he would appoint a national supply chain commander and a testing committee.
He also raised the idea of a national mask mandate.
He said a robust response to the pandemic was essential to his first months as president.
“We cannot repair the economy, restore our vitality, or relish life’s most precious moments – hugging a grandchild, birthdays, weddings, graduations, all the moments that matter most to us – until we get this virus under control,” he said.
Mr Biden’s strategy may come too late to save thousands of lives – he will not assume office until January 20.
Cases are rising in 27 states and almost 55,000 people were admitted to hospital with the disease on Friday, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
“If we don’t do anything to stop it, we are in the trajectory going straight up,” Dr Carlos Del Rio, executive associate dean of the Emory School of Medicine and Grady Health System in Georgia, told The Guardian.
The American public may not have to wait for Mr Biden’s strategy. Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator, said the crisis was “job one” for Congress after the election.
Talks between Democrats and Republicans had largely stalled.