A COVID response reset
Promising a “full-scale wartime effort,” President Joe Biden last week signed 10 executive orders aimed at getting the coronavirus pandemic under control. Those actions included:
Mask mandate:
Requiring people to wear a face covering and to practice social distancing in all federal buildings and on federal lands. The order also applies to all federal employees and contractors. People will also be required to wear masks on planes, trains and public transportation. And Biden directed federal agencies to look for ways of “maximizing public compliance with, and addressing any obstacles to, mask-wearing and other public health best practices identified by” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He’s asking Americans to wear a mask for the first 100 days of his term.
Global response:
Rejoining the World Health Organization. “As a WHO member state, the United States will work constructively with partners to strengthen and, importantly, reform the WHO, to help lead the collective effort to strengthen the international COVID-19 response and address its secondary impacts on people, communities, and health systems around the world,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of Biden’s top medical advisers, told the organization’s executive committee during a video conference.
Testing and supplies:
Creating a Pandemic Testing Board which is intended to build a national strategy around testing. Among other things, it will work to expand testing supplies and ensure “a clarity of messaging about the use of tests and insurance coverage.” He also invoked the Defense Production Act to speed up manufacturing of supplies, including N95 masks, isolation gowns, gloves, collection swabs and more.
Data collection:
Ordering all relevant agencies to evaluate their data-collection efforts and report their findings to the COVID-19 Response Coordinator. Part of the goal, the executive order notes, is to “further public understanding of the pandemic and the response, and to deter the spread of misinformation and disinformation.”
Vaccination efforts:
Directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to begin setting up vaccination centers and the CDC to begin a program to make vaccines available through local pharmacies starting next month. And he’s mobilizing the Public Health Service to deploy to assist localities in vaccinations.
Worker safety:
Ordering the Occupation Safety and Health Administration to issue within two weeks guidance on how employers can keep workers safe during the pandemic. OSHA will also determine if any emergency temporary standards are needed.
Beyond the executive orders, Dr. Rochelle Walensky was sworn in as the new director of the CDC. She most recently served as chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Walensky has said one of her top priorities will be to improve the CDC’s communications with the public to rebuild trust. Inside the agency, she wants to raise morale, in large part by restoring the primacy of science and setting politics to the side.
The pandemic exposed some CDC failures and weaknesses unrelated to politics. The test kit problem was tied to laboratory contamination at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters—a sign of sloppiness. The CDC also lost its standing as the nation’s go-to source for case counts and other measures of the epidemic after university researchers and others developed better systems for tracking infections.