COVID-19: Biden To Announce Task Force On Monday

President-elect, Joe Biden on Saturday night said he would announce his COVID-19 task force next week, The Hill reports.

Biden said: “Our work begins with getting COVID under control.”

Adding: “On Monday, I will name a group of leading scientists and experts as transition advisers to help take the Biden-Harris COVID plan and convert it into an action blue print that will start on Jan. 20.”

The Hill said that earlier in the day, Axios reported that the 12-member group will be co-led by former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner David Kessler and Yale University professor Marcella Nunez-Smith.

Murthy, who was surgeon general from 2014 to 2017, is expected to play a key role in the Biden administration. He has given advise to Biden for months on tackling COVID-19.

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Kessler served as FDA commissioner from 1990 to 1997 and is now the board chair at the Centers for Science in the Public Interest.

Other members of the task force were advisers to Biden during the campaign, according to Axios.

During a speech on Friday, a day before he was projected that he would defeat President Trump by news outlets, Biden said voters have “given us a mandate for action on COVID, the economy, on climate change and systemic racism. They made it clear they want the country to come together not continue to pull apart.”

The U.S. on Thursday set a new record for daily coronavirus cases, topping 118,000 infections. Experts have predicted that the number of cases will increase in the coming months since the colder temperatures push more people inside, where the virus can spread more easily.

Over 9.8 million people in the U.S. have contracted the virus since the pandemic began based on data from Johns Hopkins University, as at least 237,000 have died.