US President-elect Joe Biden warned on Monday local time that the spread of Coronavirus continues unabated and the United States will face a “dark winter.”
After a meeting with his newly appointed members of the COVID-19 Working Group, he said: “Bold action is needed to fight the pandemic. We will still face a very dark winter.”
According to the report, Biden could not control the U.S. response to the pandemic until he was sworn in on January 20 next year, so he used his speech to implore Americans to wear masks and continue to maintain social distance.
He said: “It doesn’t matter which party you belong to. It doesn’t matter who you vote for. If everyone wears a mask, we can save tens of thousands of lives.”
At the time of his remarks, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, a doctor, tested positive for COVID-19. A few days ago, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows also tested positive.
According to reports, after the first meeting with the Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and their members of the New Coronary Pneumonia Advisory Committee, Biden made the above remarks. The committee will help the transition team develop a very different approach from President Donald Trump to contain the pandemic. This 13-member working group is mainly composed of doctors and public health experts, who will work with the upcoming government to develop a plan to deal with the pandemic.
According to the report, when the pandemic just started to spread, Biden said that listening to the advice of scientists and medical experts is crucial to formulating a plan to get out of the pandemic. During the presidential campaign, he placed a large part of his bet on a sharp contrast with Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the dangers of the virus, even after being hospitalized with the virus.
According to reports, Coronavirus working group of the transition team will be composed of former Public Health Director Vivek Mersey, former Food and Drug Administration Director David Kessler, and Yale University Public Health Professor Marcela Nunez- Smith led. Many of them have been advising Biden and his staff throughout the campaign. Especially Kessler and Mersey, they are deeply involved in formulating the virus response plan of the Biden campaign team, and they regularly report the situation to the president-elect.
The transition team and this working group must figure out how to implement Biden’s policies, including finding supply chain problems in vaccine distribution and increasing testing.
The working group also includes Surgeon Atul Gawand at Brigham Women’s Hospital, Michael Ostrom, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and Celine Gunn, Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at New York University. Del and former Obama administration health adviser Ezkiel Emanuel.
The National Association of Manufacturers, which tends to support the Republican Party, issued a statement praising Biden for “sending a consistent message on how to control the pandemic to restore our country’s economy and save jobs and lives.”
