President-elect Joe Biden unveiled a comprehensive plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic in the United States on Thursday, massively expanding tests to support school reopening, creating more health jobs and investing billions in a national Covid vaccine campaign -19.
The plan, which Biden is expected to discuss in detail Thursday night at its transitional headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, will invest $ 20 billion in a national vaccination program in partnership with states, localities, tribes and territories. The pace of vaccinations is much slower than US officials had hoped, and states blame the lack of funding and inconsistent communication from the federal government for the slow launch.
“Current vaccination efforts are not enough to vaccinate the vast majority of the U.S. population quickly and fairly,” the Biden administration wrote in a 19-page document explaining the plan. “We need to make sure that those on the ground have what they need to get vaccinated in people’s arms.”
Here’s a brief look at what Biden’s proposal would do:
- It is investing $ 50 billion to expand testing
- It funds 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 increase the supply of gloves, masks and other consumables
- Join international efforts to stop Covid
- Provide $ 170 billion for the reopening of schools and universities
Biden would also extend the tests to support the safe reopening of schools and to protect at-risk populations, such as the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. His administration said testing was a “critical” strategy for controlling the spread of the virus, but the added tests are not yet widely available, and the US still does not use those it has effectively.
The president-elect’s plan invests $ 50 billion in testing, providing funding for rapid testing, investments to expand laboratory capacity, and to help states implement regular testing protocols.
In particular, the plan includes investments in new treatments for Covid-19. Earlier, a member of Biden’s Covid-19 advisory committee, Dr. Celine Gounder, said public health officials had focused too much on treatments such as monoclonal antibodies and Gilead Sciences’ antiviral drug remdesivir. Monoclonal antibodies, in particular, have had a lukewarm response from health care providers, often sitting unused, according to US officials.
“We need to think about other therapies,” Gounder told the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health during an Internet show, adding that “monoclonal antibodies could not be the solution here.”
The plan also provides 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 national supply of vials, as well as gloves and masks for health workers already in the front line.
The Biden administration plans to invest $ 30 billion in the Disaster Relief Fund to provide sufficient supplies of protective equipment. It will also provide 100% federal reimbursements for critical emergency supplies to states, local governments and tribes, including the deployment of the National Guard, as outlined in the plan. Biden plans to ask for another $ 10 billion to make a pandemic supply.
Biden will “restore US leadership globally” and provide support for international health and humanitarian response efforts. It is unclear whether this means that the United States will join 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 United States to the WHO.
The president-elect’s new plan comes as the coronavirus continues to spread rapidly in the United States and deaths rise sharply. The nation now has 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 a record 4,327 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, the second time in just one week that the nation’s daily death toll exceeded 4,000.
Trump’s response to the pandemic has been criticized, including the handling of the distribution of Covid-19 Pfizers and Moderna vaccines.
As of Thursday, at 9:00 a.m. ET, more than 30.6 million doses of vaccine had been distributed in the United States, but just over 11.1 million photos were administered, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Diseases. The number is far 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 retained for the second round of two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
In an attempt to speed up the pace of vaccinations, the Trump administration has also changed the way it allocates vaccine doses to states, and the CDC has extended vaccine eligibility to everyone 65 and older, as well as those with comorbid conditions, such as it would be diabetes and the heart. disease.