Coronavirus outbreak in the US is not slowing down as the country is reaching towards another grim milestone of 10 million coronavirus cases. The country averaged more than 100,000 cases for five days in a row, and the death toll has reached 237,000, according to Johns Hopkins data. To bring this worrisome situation under control Joe Biden, the President-elect, and Kamala Harris, the Vice President-elect, has made some plans to move the pandemic response to a completely new direction once they take office on the 20th of January.
Biden said on Friday that the coronavirus outbreak in the US is getting very worrisome and that he wants everyone to know that he and his team will put their plan to bring the virus under control from day one. Last week there was a frighteningly high number of new cases and by the time the new government takes office the situation could get a lot worse. The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation has projected that by the 20th of January 2021 there will be more than 372,000 coronavirus deaths in the US.
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Biden’s plan to control the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in the US includes an increased amount of testing and contact tracing. Coronavirus testing has increased dramatically since the start of the pandemic, but according to some scientists, more than 10 million tests are needed per day in order to keep the country safely open. Biden has promised that all the residents of the country will be given access to reliable free-testing.
The President-elect in his efforts to control the pandemic has also promised to provide additional investments for vaccines and treatments. The Trump administration has spent billions in the production of vaccines for the virus through Operation Warp Speed. The goal of which was to deliver around 300 million doses of the vaccines by January next year. States filed their plans regarding the distribution of the vaccines with the CDC some weeks ago but have not received any funds yet for such distribution.
Biden has promised to invest around 25 billion dollars to make sure that the vaccines are made and distributed to everyone in the country without cost. Moreover, he said that politics will have no role to play in the approval of vaccines, and the clinical data of the approved vaccines will be made available publicly.
Another part of Biden’s plan includes the mandating of masks in public. A study in October projected that more than 100,000 people could be saved if 95% of the people of the US wore face masks. Several studies and analysis from the American Hospital Association showed that the supply of personal protective equipment is going through a severe shortage since the start of the pandemic. The Biden team has promised that they will solve this problem too.
The Biden team has also said that it will give more authority to the CDC in giving guidance about when some communities are needed to be shut down. Some critics of Trump believe that he neglected CDC’s advice to reopen the economy. Biden has also promised to create a covid19 racial and ethnic disparities task force that would help in solving problems regarding inequalities in the health system. Hispanic, American Indians and blacks have seen higher rates of hospitalizations and infections.