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President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled a sweeping plan to tackle the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, massively stepping up testing to support the reopening of schools, creating more healthcare jobs and investing billion in a national vaccination campaign against Covid-19.
The plan, which Biden is expected to discuss in detail Thursday night from his transitional headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, would invest $ 20 billion in a national immunization program in partnership with states, communities, tribes and territories. The pace of vaccinations is going much slower than US officials had hoped, and states blame the lack of funding and inconsistent communication from the federal government for the slow deployment.
“Current vaccination efforts are not enough to quickly and fairly vaccinate the vast majority of the American population,” the Biden administration wrote in a 19-page document explaining the plan. “We have to make sure that those on the ground have what they need to get the vaccinations to people’s arms.”
Here’s a look at what Biden’s proposal would do as well:
- Investing $ 50 billion to expand testing
- Fund 100,000 new jobs for public health workers
- Identify and treat emerging strains of Covid and invest in new treatments
- Protect vulnerable groups, health workers and increase 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 step up 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 testing was a “critical” strategy to control the spread of the virus, but additional testing is still not widely available and the United States is still not using what it does effectively.
The president-elect’s plan invests $ 50 billion in testing, providing funds for rapid testing, investments to expand laboratory capacity, and help states implement regular testing protocols.
Notably, the plan includes investing in new treatments for Covid-19. Earlier today, a member of Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board, Dr Celine Gounder, said public health officials were focusing too much on treatments such as monoclonal antibodies and remdesivir, an antiviral drug from Gilead Sciences. Monoclonal antibodies, in particular, have had a lukewarm response from health care providers, often unused, according to US officials.
“We have to think of other” therapies, “Gounder told the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in a webcast, adding that” monoclonal antibodies may not be the answer here. “
The plan also calls for the creation of a fund to support 100,000 new jobs in the health sector and the use of the National Guard to increase the country’s supply of vials as well as gloves and masks for officers. health already on the front line.
The Biden administration plans to invest $ 30 billion in the Disaster Relief Fund to ensure an adequate supply of protective gear. It will also provide 100% federal reimbursement for essential emergency supplies to states, local governments and tribes, including the National Guard deployment, according to an outline of the plan. Biden plans to ask for an additional $ 10 billion to manufacture pandemic supplies.
Biden would “restore American leadership at the global level” and provide support for international humanitarian and health response efforts. It is not known if that means the United States will join the World Health Organization after President Donald Trump pulled the country from the international agency last year. However, Biden has said in the past that he intends to send the United States back 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. The country currently 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 a record 4,327 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, the second time in just a week the country’s daily death toll topped 4,000.
Trump’s response to the pandemic has been criticized, including his handling of the distribution of the Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizers and Moderna.
As of 9 a.m.ET as of Thursday, more than 30.6 million doses of vaccine had been distributed in the United States, but just over 11.1 million vaccines had been administered, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure falls far short of the federal government’s goal of vaccinating 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 withheld for the second round of two-dose vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
In an effort 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 expanded vaccine eligibility to all people 65 years of age and older as well as ‘to those with comorbid illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease.
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