Coronavirus: Joe Biden signs executive actions to end the pandemic | Biden administration

Joe Biden on Thursday signed another round of executive actions, his first full day in the White House, aimed at realizing his plans to use the power of the federal government to end the coronavirus pandemic.

His administration is planning a coordinated federal response aimed at restoring confidence in government and focused on boosting vaccines, increasing testing, reopening schools, and tackling inequalities caused by the disease.

“We can and will beat Covid-19. America deserves a response to the Covid-19 pandemic that is driven by science, data and public health – not politics, ”the White House said in a statement outlining the administration’s national strategy.

This strategy is based on seven major objectives: restoring public confidence in government efforts; get more doses of vaccine in more arms; mitigate the spread – including mask warrants; emergency economic relief; a strategy to make schools work and get workers back to work; the creation of an equity working group to tackle disparities in suffering involving questions of race, ethnicity and geography; and prepare for future threats.

Biden pledged to vaccinate 100 million people in 100 days and reverse the impact of a year of poorly managed response under Donald Trump that has seen more than 400,000 people die and over 24 million infected – by far the worst rate to the world.

More than 4,200 people died from the coronavirus in the United States on Wednesday, the second-highest daily total from an epidemic whose first confirmed case was announced exactly one year ago.

But the decrees go far beyond vaccination efforts.

On Thursday, Biden announced an increase in travel restrictions for flyers around the world.

“In light of the new variants of Covid-19,” he said, international travelers heading to the United States “will have to do some testing before getting on that plane … and self-quarantine when ‘they come to America’.

The president plans to re-engage with the World Health Organization, a reversal of the Trump administration’s decision to cut ties. Biden is also starting a White House Covid-19 response team.

Anthony Fauci, the senior public health official responsible for the pandemic for the Trump administration and now for Biden, delivered a speech to the World Health Organization before dawn on Thursday after being chosen to head the US delegation to the global health group, in one of the early acts of the Biden presidency.

Fauci said letters were delivered to the group formally withdrawing the US withdrawal process from the WHO that Trump announced last May after saying it was too “China-centric” and disproportionately funded by the United States without any profit.

“I am honored to announce that the United States will remain a member of the WHO. The United States also intends to meet its financial obligations to the organization, ”Fauci said.

In an interview with Good Morning America Thursday morning, Fauci said that “it was really a very good day” as the United States re-engaged with the WHO, a disengagement from which, he said, d Other countries and health officials in the United States had found it “very disconcerting.”

He said he was “fairly confident” that the United States could meet its goal of 100 days of vaccination.

The Biden administration plans to partner with states and local governments to set up community vaccination centers in stadiums, gyms and conference centers.

The president called Trump’s White House vaccine distribution and administration plan a “dismal failure” after the federal government missed its own stated goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans by the end of this year. 2020. It only reached about 10% of its target.

The Trump administration’s vaccine distribution plan was “nonexistent,” forcing Biden’s fledgling administration to start from scratch, according to a CNN report citing anonymous sources.

The administration will employ new sites with federal agency personnel as well as first responders and medical personnel serving in the military. The government plans to partner with federally qualified health centers to help underserved communities distribute vaccines; mobile clinics will also be set up.

To expand vaccine distribution, the Biden administration plans to end the Trump administration’s policy of “withholding large dose levels.” Other states will be asked to encourage vaccinations.

Biden issued an executive order setting up a Covid-19 pandemic testing board. The idea is for the board to come up with a “clear, unified approach to testing,” according to administration officials Biden.

And the president signed another executive order to make testing for the virus free for Americans without medical coverage and to provide ways for the most vulnerable to get help.

Another decree requires people wear masks on trains, planes and ships.

Biden also plans to use the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (Fema) disaster relief fund to reimburse personal protective equipment (PPE), cleaning, and costs needed to safely reopen schools. .

The administration is seeking to fill supply shortages and will require federal agencies to use the Defense Production Act, a measure that allows the government to mobilize companies to expand production of essential equipment.

Biden will restore a White House team on global health risks set up under Barack Obama and dismantled under Trump.

The decrees are intended in particular to help people of color. One will set up a Covid-19 health equity working group.

Biden will issue an order to develop a national strategy to reopen schools, hoping to meet his goal of opening most elementary and middle schools in his first 100 days in office, and ask Congress to provide 130 billion dollars in additional aid to schools, 35 billion dollars. for colleges and universities, $ 25 billion for daycares threatened with closure and $ 15 billion in childcare assistance for families in difficulty.