President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled a comprehensive plan to combat the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, massively expanding testing to support school reopening, creating more health care jobs and investing billions in a national vaccine campaign against Covid-19.
The plan, which Biden is expected to discuss in detail Thursday night from its transitional headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, would invest $ 20 billion in a national vaccination program in partnership with states, localities, tribes and territories. The pace of vaccinations is going much slower than U.S. officials had expected, and states blame the federal government’s lack of funding and inconsistent communication for the slow deployment.
“Current vaccination efforts are not enough to vaccinate the vast majority of the American population quickly and equitably,” the Biden administration wrote in a 19-page document explaining the plan. “We need to make sure those on the ground have what they need to get vaccinated in people’s arms.”
Here’s a look at what Biden’s proposal would also do:
- It is investing $ 50 billion to expand testing
- Fund 100,000 new jobs for public health workers
- Identify and address emerging Covid strains and invest in new treatments
- Protect vulnerable groups, health workers and enhance the supply of gloves, masks and other supplies
- Join international efforts to stop Covid
- Provide $ 170 billion to reopen schools and universities
Biden would also expand testing to support the safe reopening of schools and protect populations at risk, such as the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. His administration said the tests are a “critical” strategy for controlling the spread of the virus, but additional tests are not yet widely available and the United States does not yet use those it actually has.
The president-elect’s plan invests $ 50 billion in testing, providing funds for rapid testing, investments to expand laboratory capacity, and helping states implement regular testing protocols.
It should be noted that the plan includes investing in new treatments for Covid-19. Earlier in the day, a member of Biden’s Coviden-19 advisory board, Dr. Celine Gounder, said public health officials had focused too much on treatments such as monoclonal antibodies and Gilead Sciences remdesivir antiviral drug. Monoclonal antibodies, in particular, have had a lukewarm response from health care providers, often sitting unused, according to U.S. officials.
“We need to think about other therapies,” Gounder told the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health during an Internet broadcast, adding that “monoclonal antibodies may not be the solution here.”
The plan also calls for the creation of a fund to support 100,000 new health jobs, as well as the use of the National Guard to increase the supply of vials, as well as gloves and masks for health workers. health that is already at the forefront.
The Biden administration plans to invest $ 30 billion in the Disaster Relief Fund to ensure a sufficient supply of protective equipment. It will also provide a 100% federal reimbursement of critical emergency supplies to states, local governments and tribes, including the deployment of the National Guard, according to a plan outline. Biden plans to ask for an additional $ 10 billion to make pandemic supplies.
Biden “would restore U.S. leadership globally” and support international health and humanitarian response efforts. It is unclear whether this means the U.S. will rejoin the World Health Organization after President Donald Trump withdrew the nation from the international agency last year. However, Biden has said in the past that he intends to return the US to the WHO.
The president-elect’s new plan comes as the coronavirus continues to spread rapidly across the United States and deaths rise sharply. Now, the nation records at least 245,300 new cases of Covid-19 and at least 3,360 virus-related deaths each day, based on a seven-day average calculated by CNBC using data from Johns Hopkins University. The United States reported 4,327 coronavirus fatalities on Tuesday, the second time in just one week that the nation’s daily death toll exceeds 4,000.
Trump’s response to the pandemic has been criticized, including his handling of distributing Pfizers and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines.
As of Thursday, at 9 a.m. ET, more than 30.6 million doses of vaccine had been distributed across the United States, but just over 11.1 million shots had been administered, according to compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The figure is a far cry from the federal government’s goal of inoculating 20 million Americans by the end of 2020 and 50 million Americans by the end of this month.
The Trump administration on Tuesday adopted Biden’s plan to release most of the doses it had retained for the second round of two-dose shots from Pfizer and Moderna.
In an attempt to speed up the pace of vaccinations, the Trump administration also changed the way vaccine doses were allocated to states, and the CDC extended vaccine eligibility to anyone 65 and older. as well as those with comorbid diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.