President-Elect Biden Announces COVID-19 Response Strategy

One aspect of Biden’s COVID-19 response strategy is to fix the PPE problems “for good.”

President-Elect Biden Announces COVID-19 Response Strategy

Washington – Although President Donald Trump has not conceded that he has lost the presidential race, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have already announced the strategies their COVID-19 advisory board will take to combat the virus.

The approach the Biden administration has adopted to combat the coronavirus, which is outlined on its transition website, is dramatically different from the Trump administration’s approach

In addition to promising to listen to science and public health officials, Biden has pledged to “fix personal protective equipment (PPE) problems for good,” according to the transition team’s website.

Early on in the pandemic, states and hospitals had to resort to extraordinary measures to obtain the PPE they needed. The problem of lack of sufficient supplies of N95 masks in the U.S. is once again an issue as the nation is currently experiencing a record number of coronavirus cases, reports CBS News. On Sunday, the U.S. surpassed 10 million COVID-19 cases, and the rate of new cases is soaring to an average of more than 100,000 per day, reports the New York Times.

Biden’s team also vowed to “Provide clear, consistent, evidence-based guidance for how communities should navigate the pandemic – and the resources for schools, small businesses, and families to make it through.”

Additionally, the president-elect announced the members of his advisory board, one of which includes Dr. Rick Bright, a former Trump administration whistleblower who resigned, alleging the Trump administration ignored his early warnings about the coronavirus, reports USA Today.

The board members are:

CO-CHAIRS

  • Dr. David Kessler: David A. Kessler, MD, is Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF. Dr. Kessler served as FDA Commissioner from 1990 to 1997, appointed by President George H.W. Bush and reappointed by President Bill Clinton.
  • Dr. Vivek Murthy: Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, served as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States from 2014-2017.  As the Vice Admiral of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, he commanded a uniformed service of 6,600 public health officers globally. The officers focused on helping underserved populations, protecting the nation from Ebola and Zika, responding to the Flint water crisis, and natural disasters such as hurricanes.
  • Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith: Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS, is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Public Health, and Management at Yale University and the Associate Dean for Health Equity Research at the Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Nunez-Smith’s research focuses on promoting health and healthcare equity for structurally marginalized populations.

MEMBERS

  • Dr. Luciana Borio: Luciana Borio, MD, is VP, Technical Staff at In-Q-Tel. She is also a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Borio specializes in biodefense, emerging infectious diseases, medical product development, and complex public health emergencies. She served in senior leadership positions at the FDA and National Security Council, including as Assistant Commissioner for Counterterrorism Policy and Acting Chief Scientist at the FDA, and Director of FDA’s Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats.
  • Dr. Rick Bright: Rick Bright, PhD, is an American immunologist, virologist, and former public health official.  Dr. Bright was the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) from 2016 to 2020 and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services. He also previously served as an advisor to the World Health Organization and the United States Department of Defense. His career has focused on the development of vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics to address emerging infectious diseases and national security threats.
  • Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel: Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, is an oncologist and Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. From January 2009 to January 2011, he served as special advisor for health policy to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Since 1997, he has served as chair of the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
  • Dr. Atul Gawande: Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is the Cyndy and John Fish Distinguished Professor of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Gawande is also the founder and chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center between Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for health systems innovation, and of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. He previously served as a senior advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton Administration.
  • Dr. Celine Gounder: Celine Gounder, MD, ScM, FIDSA is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and cares for patients at Bellevue Hospital Center. From 1998 to 2012, Dr. Gounder studied TB and HIV in South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Ethiopia and Brazil. While on faculty at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Gounder was the Director for Delivery for the Gates Foundation-funded Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic. She later served as Assistant Commissioner and Director of the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
  • Dr. Julie Morita: Julie Morita, MD, is Executive Vice President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Morita previously served as the Health Commissioner for the City of Chicago for nearly two decades. She is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and has served on many state, local, and national health committees, including the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Community Based Solutions to Promote Health Equity in the United States.
  • Dr. Michael Osterholm: Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, is Regents Professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Osterholm previously served as a Science Envoy for Health Security on behalf of the State Department. For 24 years (1975 to 1999), he worked in the Minnesota Department of Health; the last 15 years as state epidemiologist.
  • Ms. Loyce Pace: Loyce Pace, MPH, is the Executive Director and President of Global Health Council. Over the course of her career, Loyce has championed policies for access to essential medicines and health services worldwide. Ms. Pace has worked with Physicians for Human Rights and Catholic Relief Services, and previously served in leadership positions at the LIVESTRONG Foundation and the American Cancer Society.
  • Dr. Robert Rodriguez: Dr. Robert Rodriguez graduated from Harvard Medical School and currently serves as a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine, where he works on the frontline in the emergency department and ICU of two major trauma centers. He has authored over 100 scientific publications and has led national research teams examining a range of topics in medicine, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of frontline providers. In July 2020, Dr. Rodriguez volunteered to help with a critical surge of COVID-19 patients in the ICU in his hometown of Brownsville, Texas.
  • Dr. Eric Goosby: Eric Goosby, MD, is an internationally recognized expert on infectious diseases and Professor of Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine. During the Clinton Administration, Dr. Goosby was the founding director of the Ryan White CARE Act, the largest federally funded HIV/AIDS program. He went on to become the interim Director of the White House’s Office of National AIDS Policy. In the Obama Administration, Dr. Goosby was appointed Ambassador-at-Large and implemented the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). After serving as the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, he was appointed by the UN Secretary General as the Special Envoy for TB.

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About the Author

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Robin has been covering the security and campus law enforcement industries since 1998 and is a specialist in school, university and hospital security, public safety and emergency management, as well as emerging technologies and systems integration. She joined CS in 2005 and has authored award-winning editorial on campus law enforcement and security funding, officer recruitment and retention, access control, IP video, network integration, event management, crime trends, the Clery Act, Title IX compliance, sexual assault, dating abuse, emergency communications, incident management software and more. Robin has been featured on national and local media outlets and was formerly associate editor for the trade publication Security Sales & Integration. She obtained her undergraduate degree in history from California State University, Long Beach.

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One response to “President-Elect Biden Announces COVID-19 Response Strategy”

  1. Peter J. Allen says:

    That is a very biased and inaccurate article. Without going into detail here you missed a lot of background, made unfair and inaccurate statements about the current administration and did nothing to help us, the readers, your customers, understand how this is going to affect us. The tone of the first two paragraphs makes this clear this is more a political article than informational. I thought this was a professional magazine dedicated to Campus Safety, I believe I may have been mistaken.

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