President-elect Joe Biden made President Donald Trump‘s mishandling of the coronavirus a focal point of his campaign for the White House.
He’s now set to inherit the worsening crisis in January, with a new record for the highest number of cases in a single day reported on Saturday.
In a victory speech on Saturday night, Biden signaled that the fight against the virus that has so far claimed more than 230,000 lives in the U.S. would be his administration’s priority.
Now, an official website—buildbackbetter.com—for the Biden-Harris presidential transition has been launched, along with a Twitter account, detailing a seven-point plan to defeat the virus.
The work ahead in the next 73 days will be the foundation for an administration that puts the health, safety, and character of our communities first.
Learn how the Biden-Harris transition will move forward at https://t.co/97NKAZksSLhttps://t.co/No1DQqI4gx
— Biden-Harris Presidential Transition (@Transition46) November 8, 2020
The American people deserve an “urgent, robust, and professional” response to the public health and economic crisis, the website says.
In another rebuke to the Trump administration’s response, the website says the Biden-Harris administration will always “listen to science” and “ensure public health decisions are informed by public health professionals.”
So what does the Biden-Harris’s administrations seven-point plan to beat COVID-19 involve?
‘Regular, reliable, and free’ testing
The Biden-Harris administration plan involves doubling the number of drive-through testing sites and scaling up testing capacity by investing in at-home and instant tests.
The plan also involves creating Pandemic Testing Board modeled on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s War Production Board. “It’s how we produced tanks, planes, uniforms, and supplies in record time, and it’s how we will produce and distribute tens of millions of tests,” the website says.
Fix PPE problems ‘for good’
Biden is “taking responsibility and giving states, cities, tribes, and territories the critical supplies they need,” the website says.
He will “fully use” the Defense Production Act to ramp up the production of masks, face shields and other protective gear so the national supply exceeds demand and stockpiles are fully replenished, it adds.
The plan also involves working to ensure there is ample manufacturing capability in the U.S. for such items in the future so the U.S. is no longer dependent on other nations in a crisis.
Provide ‘clear, consistent, evidence-based’ guidance
Biden will also direct the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to issue specific and evidence-based guidance for communities during the pandemic, the website says.
These will direct when to open or close businesses, schools and direct appropriate restrictions on the size of gatherings as well as when to issue stay-at-home orders.
Plan for distributing treatments and vaccines
The Biden-Harris administration intends to plan for the effective and equitable distribution of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines because “development isn’t enough if they aren’t effectively distributed.”
This involves investing $25 billion to guarantee that a vaccine will make its way to “every American, cost-free,” according to the transition website.
The transition website also Biden and Harris will ensure politics will not determine the safety or effectiveness of any vaccine.
The administration will put scientists in charge of such decision and publicly release clinical data for any vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the plan says.
The plan adds the Biden-Harris administration will ensure work to prevent price-gouging as new drugs and treatments come to market.
Protect older and high-risk Americans
The plan says Biden will also work to protect those most vulnerable to coronavirus by establishing a COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force, as proposed by Harris.
The task force will provide recommendations and oversight on disparities in the public health and economic crisis.
Biden also intends to crate a Nationwide Pandemic Dashboard that Americans can check in real-time to understand if there is active transmission of the virus in their zip codes—which will help individuals understand the level of precaution they need to take.
Predict, prevent, and mitigate pandemic threats
The Biden-Harris administration will also “immediately restore” the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, the team responsible for pandemic preparedness.
The team, established in 2015 by President Barack Obama‘s National Security Advisor Susan Rice, was disbanded by the Trump administration in 2018.
It would also restore the U.S.’s relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO), which Trump moved to withdraw from over the summer despite the raging coronavirus pandemic.
The Baden-Harris administration also plan to expand the number of CDC “disease detectives” deployed across the globe, including rebuilding the office in Beijing, China.
Nationwide mask mandates
The Biden-Harris administration also wants to implement nationwide mask mandates by working with governors and mayors and by asking Americans to “step up in a time of crisis.”
The plan notes that experts have agreed that many lives can be saving by wearing masks—something Trump turned into a partisan issue.
Biden will continue to call on Americans to wear masks when around people they don’t live with and urge every Governor to make it mandatory in their state.
Read the full Biden-Harris plan to beat COVID-19 here.
