The U.S. surpassed 10 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus on Monday, the same day President-elect Joe Biden urged all Americans to wear a mask in an effort to contain the pandemic’s spread.
Johns Hopkins University of Medicine has been tracking the pandemic’s spread over the globe. New daily confirmed cases are up more than 60% over the past two weeks, to an average of nearly 109,000 a day. Average daily cases are on the rise in 48 states.
The U.S. accounts for about one fifth of the world’s 50 million confirmed cases. U.S. coronavirus deaths are up 18% over the past two weeks, averaging 939 every day. The virus has now killed more than 237,000 Americans.
Biden and and VP-elect Kamala Harris were briefed virtually Monday morning on the coronavirus pandemic by a task force of experts their transition team announced only hours earlier. Biden and Harris were then scheduled to hold hours of internal meetings about transitioning to the White House in January.
“We could save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months. Not Democratic or Republican lives, American lives,” Biden said. “Please, I implore you, wear a mask.”
Biden said he wants to ramp up production of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and testing supplies, saying, “The bottom line: I will spare no effort to turn this pandemic around.”
Watch the replay of Biden’s speech here:
The task force briefing was at the Queen, a theater in downtown Wilmington, Del., where Biden’s campaign built a studio and other communications infrastructure and has spent months organizing virtual meetings and speeches.
The first to speak during the briefing was former Food Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. David Kessler. He is co-chairing the task force with former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a Yale University associate professor and associate dean whose research focuses on promoting health care equality for marginalized populations.
Also part of the group is Rick Bright, a whistleblower who was demoted after criticizing the Trump administration’s pandemic response. Bright had been head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
As of Monday, the U.S. continues to lead the world in the number of coronavirus cases — more than 9.97 million — and deaths, with almost 238,000. The nation is averaging more than 100,000 new coronavirus infections a day, frequently breaking records for daily cases.
Public health officials warn the nation is entering the worst stretch yet for COVID-19 as winter sets in and the holiday season approaches, increasing the risk of rapid transmission as Americans travel, shop and celebrate with loved ones.
“The next two months are going to be rough, difficult ones,” said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist and department chairman at the Yale School of Public Health. “We could see another 100,000 deaths by January.”
Biden announced Monday that former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. David Kessler and Yale University associate professor and associate dean Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith will serve as co-chairs of a coronavirus advisory board.
The board, including doctors and scientists who’ve served in previous administrations, will be tasked with taking the virus proposals that Biden released during the campaign and turning them into a blueprint the new president can enact after he is inaugurated in January.
“Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic is one of the most important battles our administration will face, and I will be informed by science and by experts,” Biden said in a statement Monday.
Biden pledged during the campaign to make testing free and widely available; to hire thousands of health workers to help implement contact-tracing programs; and to instruct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide clear, expert-informed guidelines, among other proposals.
As the Democratic nominee, Biden made President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic a central focus of his campaign. But much of what Biden has proposed will take congressional action, and he’s certain to face challenges in a closely divided House and Senate.
“I’m not running on the false promises of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch. But I do promise this: We will start on day one doing the right things,” he said during a campaign event last month.
Dr. Phillip Coule, chief medical officer at Augusta University Medical Center in Georgia, hopes the nation can get past the political divisions that have complicated the response to the virus now that the election is over.
“Now that we are post-election, let’s just handle this based on the science and not the politics of this disease and the pandemic,” he said.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said he believes even the most ardent COVID-19 deniers will strike a more conciliatory tone as Trump’s election defeat sinks in.
“I think the political pressure of denying COVID is gone,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think you’ll see scientists speak with an unmuzzled voice now. And I think the numbers are going to go up, and Americans are going to get how serious this is.”
The president-elect is limited in what he can legally do before he’s sworn in, but he and his transition team should begin laying the groundwork immediately, said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and former health commissioner for Baltimore.
Establishing some consensus with state leaders on a national response, including a nationwide mask mandate, should be a top priority, she said. Opposition to wearing masks remains a stubborn issue, particularly in some of the hardest-hit states.
“Each state is acting fairly autonomously on their own policies, and we’ve seen how that’s played out,” said Ko, the Yale expert. “This disease needs national and global responses.”
Overcoming months of mixed messaging on the pandemic is another uphill climb that Biden must start addressing during his transition, said Angela Rasmussen, a virus researcher at Columbia University in New York.
“The past year of misinformation, confusion and gaslighting from the White House has really left people without any trust that our government is capable of handling this,” she said. “It’s going to be critical to begin communicating that, yes, this administration will be led by the science.”
During his first remarks as president-elect, Biden said Saturday that his COVID-19 task force will create a plan “built on bedrock science” and “constructed out of compassion, empathy and concern.”
His surrogates, meanwhile, have spent the days since the election assuring the public the administration will be ready to respond to the pandemic.
“I think there’s a sense of urgency throughout,” Pete Buttigieg, a former Democratic presidential hopeful who is now on Biden’s transition team, said on Fox News Channel’s “Fox News Sunday.” “We know that every day is bringing more loss, more pain and more danger to the American people, and it’s why he’s not waiting until he’s taking office to begin immediately assembling people who have the right kind of expertise and planning to actually listen to them.”
There’s also hope in the wider medical community that a Biden presidency will help restore U.S. leadership on global public health challenges, including the development and distribution of a vaccine when it becomes available.
Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist of the World Health Organization, said she was more optimistic that a Biden administration would join Covax, a WHO-led project aimed to help deploy vaccines to the neediest people worldwide, whether they live in rich or poor countries.
“Everyone recognizes that for a pandemic, you cannot have a country-by-country approach. You need a global approach,” Swaminathan said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
