How Biden Plans to Change America's Response to the Pandemic

Biden: First speech as US president-elect 6:42

(CNN) -

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris say they will take America's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in a radically different direction.

"The pandemic is becoming significantly more worrisome across the country," Biden said Friday.

"I want everyone to know that from day one we are going to implement our plan to control this virus."

There were a huge number of new cases last week, and by the time Biden takes office on January 20, the influential model at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projects there will be more than 372,000 deaths from covid- 19.

That's 135,000 more than the current total.

"By the time the Biden-Harris administration takes over, this virus will already have run rampant in American communities," Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University, told CNN on Sunday.

While the administration of President Donald Trump touted ending the pandemic as one of its accomplishments, Biden has laid out a plan for the pandemic on his campaign website and is now on the Biden-Harris transition website posted Sunday. .

Biden is expected to announce the names of the dozen leaders who will be part of his coronavirus task force on Monday.

CNN reported on Saturday that it will be led by former Chief Health Officer Dr. Vivek Murthy, former US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. David Kessler, and Dr. Marcella Núñez-Smith of Yale University. .

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That doesn't mean Trump's White House coronavirus task force is turning off the lights.

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Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, said Sunday on CNN that it is vitally important that the respective Trump and Biden coronavirus task forces work together.

"First and foremost, I think we should demand cooperation," Jha said.

Here are five ways Biden says the response to the US coronavirus will change when he is president.

More covid-19 testing and contact tracing

Number one on Biden's pledge list is more testing and contact tracing.

Testing has increased dramatically since the early days of the pandemic.

But scientists say the nation needs tens of millions of tests per day to safely keep the country open.

And even 10 months after the pandemic, there are still not enough.

Without the tests, scientists cannot have a clear idea of ​​where the virus is spreading.

Since it is estimated that up to 40% of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, a rapid test result is key to stopping the spread of the disease.

And research has found that around 75% of infected contacts must be quarantined to stop the spread.

Biden promises that all Americans will have access to "regular, reliable and free testing."

They say they will double down on self-service trial sites, invest in new technology and create a US Public Health Jobs Corps that would mobilize "at least 100,000" culturally competent contact trackers.

Biden says he would also borrow a page from the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and create something akin to the War Production Board, which helped oversee the conversion of peacetime factories into plants that made military equipment and weapons.

A Pandemic Testing Board, Biden says, would help produce and distribute tens of millions of tests.

Additional investment in vaccines and covid-19 treatments

Since March, the Trump administration has spent billions to develop and scale up COVID-19 vaccines and treatments through Operation Warp Speed.

Its goal is to produce and deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines by January 2021.

Several potential vaccines are in large-scale trials.

States submitted their vaccine distribution plans to the CDC weeks ago.

But they have not received funds from Congress to begin building the infrastructure they will need to distribute those vaccines to tens of millions of people.

Biden promises to invest an additional $ 25 billion to manufacture and distribute vaccines to everyone in the U.S. for free.

They say the policy will not influence the approval of a vaccine and that the new administration will make clinical data for any approved vaccine publicly available.

The Biden campaign also promised that the therapies and drugs would be affordable.

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Mandatory masks and more protective gear

Biden has said he would work with local governors and mayors to demand masks in public.

An October modeling study showed that if 95% of Americans wore masks, more than 100,000 lives could be saved with COVID-19.

Biden's team also says it will address issues with personal protective equipment for healthcare workers.

Several studies have shown that there has been a severe shortage of personal protective equipment since the beginning of 2020, and some shortages have worsened, according to a September analysis by the American Hospital Association.

Often times, nursing home and medical staff have had to reuse gloves, masks and other protective equipment at their own risk.

The National Nurses Union union estimates that more than 1,700 health workers have died in the pandemic.

Between March and May, 6% of all hospitalized COVID-19 patients were healthcare personnel, according to a CDC report in October.

While the Trump administration has claimed to use the Defense Production Act to increase production of protective equipment, a nonpartisan analysis from September found that it has rarely done so.

Biden said he would use that power to make sure national supply stocks are fully replenished.

He also promised to help create American-sourced products so that the United States is not dependent on other countries.

In addition to encouraging Congress to pass an emergency package to help schools pay for pandemic supplies, the Biden administration would create a "reset package" to help small businesses pay for protective equipment and Plexiglas.

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A push for 'clear, consistent and evidence-based guidance'

The Biden administration also says it would encourage the CDC to take a more active role in providing specific guidance to communities on when to close.

Trump's critics say the agency has been sidelined in favor of reopening the economy.

Biden's team says it would create a nationwide Pandemic Control Panel so that people could measure for themselves, in real time, how much disease is in their zip code.

That level of data has been difficult to find.

Biden would also create a Covid-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force that would become a permanent Post-pandemic Infectious Disease Racial Disparities Task Force that would address issues with disparities in the public health system.

Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities have had significantly higher rates of infection and hospitalization.

Biden sends a message of faith to the victims of covid-19 1:44

Rejoin WHO and look for future threats

The Trump administration formally began the process of leaving the World Health Organization in July.

Biden says he would restore America's relationship with the WHO.

The Biden administration also says it plans to expand the ranks of CDC supervisors, so its disease detectives can spot future threats.

The Trump administration had cut some of those jobs, including in the China office.

During the Trump administration, PREDICT, the pathogen-monitoring program that looks for threats from future diseases such as coronavirus, ended.

Biden said he would relaunch it.

Biden also said he would reinstate the White House National Security Council's Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which the Trump administration had incorporated into another organization in 2018. It had been created by the Obama administration in 2016 to help manage threats like Ebola.

CNN's Maggie Fox, Lauren Mascarenhas, Leanna Faulk, Dan Merica, and Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.

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