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Joe Biden's Response To Coronavirus (Covid-19) Find out more about Joe Biden's Response To Coronavirus (Covid-19)

Donald J. Trump failed to do his number one job protect Americans to protect Americans from the coronavirus over 400,000 Americans have died due to Trump's failures. It is now up to Joe Biden to protect the American people from the damage Trump has done.
By Sam Fossum, Nikki Carvajal, Maegan Vazquez and Deidre McPhillips, CNN

(CNN) President Joe Biden on Thursday mourned 1 million American deaths from Covid-19, using the occasion to again urge Congress to pass additional funding to control the pandemic. While other official tallies have placed the figure a bit short of that mark, Biden marked the moment during the White House's latest virtual Global Covid-19 Summit, reflecting on the pandemic's devastation on the nation after more than two years. "This pandemic isn't over. Today, we mark a tragic milestone here in the United States -- 1 million Covid deaths. One million empty chairs around the family dinner table. Each irreplaceable, irreplaceable losses. Each leaving behind a family, a community, forever changed because of this pandemic. Our hearts go out to all those who are struggling," Biden said during his opening remarks at the summit, later acknowledging that "around the world, many more millions have died" as a result of the pandemic. The President told attendees that the global community has "to start working to prevent the next variant, and the next pandemic, now."
By Donald Judd and Paul LeBlanc, CNN

Washington (CNN) The Biden administration has secured the purchase of 20 million treatment courses of Paxlovid, Pfizer's antiviral Covid-19 pill, a senior administration official told CNN on Monday. The administration will work with the manufacturer to accelerate production and delivery of the new drug to pharmacies across the country, the official told reporters. A tranche of 100,000 courses will initially be available to pharmacies per quarter while demand and uptake are monitored. Paxlovid combines a new antiviral drug named nirmatrelvir and an older one called ritonavir and is administered as three pills given twice a day for five days. Data released by Pfizer late last year showed the treatment cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% if given to high-risk adults within a few days of their first symptoms.
The requirements make "workplaces safer for workers as well as for customers."
By Oren Oppenheim

The Supreme Court's decision to block the Biden administration's vaccine-or-test requirement for large private businesses is a "setback for public health," United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday. "Well, the news about the workplace requirement being blocked was very disappointing, Martha. It was a setback for public health. Because what these requirements ultimately are helpful for is not just protecting the community at large but making our workplaces safer for workers as well as for customers," Murthy said. more...
By Jeremy Diamond, Paul LeBlanc, Kate Sullivan, Kaitlan Collins and Betsy Klein, CNN

Washington (CNN) President Joe Biden is expected to deliver remarks on Thursday announcing his administration will purchase an additional 500 million Covid-19 tests as well as deploy a new wave of medical teams to six states to help hospitals combat Covid-19, a White House official told CNN. The 500 million new Covid-19 tests will be purchased to meet future demand and are in addition to the previously announced 500 million tests the White House is in the process of acquiring, according to a White House official. The military medical teams will support the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Henry Ford Hospital outside Detroit, University of New Mexico hospital in Albuquerque and University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, the official said. more...
By Kevin Liptak, CNN

Washington (CNN) President Joe Biden, speaking to the nation's governors, conceded Monday the steps he took earlier this year to scale up testing capacity for Covid-19 weren't enough to meet demand as a wave driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant crashes across the country. "It's not enough. It's clearly not enough. If we'd have known, we'd have gone harder, quicker if we could have," he said while joining a weekly virtual meeting between state leaders and members of his Covid-19 response team. He said long testing lines over the Christmas weekend "shows that we have more work to do." Biden's recognition of the testing shortfalls came a week after he laid out an enhanced strategy for combating the new surge focused heavily on accelerating testing and vaccinations. more...
By Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) The Biden administration scored a significant victory Friday in its court battles to enforce various federal Covid-19 vaccine mandates, with an appeals court ruling that the government can enforce its vaccine-or-testing rule for companies with more than 100 employees. Soon after the order came down, those challenging the mandate said that they'd turn to the Supreme Court to put it on hold. The decision in favor of employer mandate, from the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals, came after a separate appeals court on Friday declined a Justice Department request that it reinstate the administration's federal contractor mandate, which had been blocked nationwide by a federal judge earlier this month. A third Biden mandate -- requiring vaccines for certain heath care workers -- is being reviewed by the Supreme Court, after lower courts froze it in half the states in the country. more...
NBC News

President Joe Biden announced new vaccine mandates for federal workers, large employers and healthcare providers. Biden said, "This is not about freedom or personal choice, it is about protecting those around you." video...
Tamara Keith, Dana Farrington | NPR

President Biden is set to announce new COVID-19 vaccination and testing rules for federal employees Thursday afternoon. The administration is hoping to increase vaccinations as the highly transmissible delta variant takes hold. But beyond urging Americans to get the shot and trying to expand access to the vaccines, the president has limited ability to force action. Except when it comes to the federal workforce. Here, Biden has the ability to go beyond urging. more...
By Nancy Cordes, Alexander Tin, Kathryn Watson

The Biden administration is purchasing 500 million doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine to donate to the global supply, the White House said Thursday. That will provide enough shots to fully vaccinate 250 million people. The U.S. is donating 200 million doses this year and 300 million doses in the first half of 2022, the White House said. All of the doses will be distributed through COVAX — the global entity that is working to ensure equitable access to COVID testing and vaccines — and will be given to 92 low- and middle-income countries and the African Union. more...
Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response team is holding a news briefing Thursday on the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 33.3 million Americans and killed at least 595,849 people. On Wednesday, Biden said the administration was doubling down on its efforts to get more Americans vaccinated against Covid-19 by the Fourth of July, a date the president has said he hopes will mark a turning point in the pandemic in the U.S. In early May, Biden announced his administration’s new goals in the fight against this virus: getting 70% of U.S. adults to receive at least one dose of a vaccine and having 160 million adults fully vaccinated by Independence Day. more...
The move comes after months of internal debate and external pressure.
By ERIN BANCO

The Biden administration has announced which countries will share in the first 25 million Covid-19 vaccine doses donated by the U.S. to help low- and middle-income nations combat the pandemic. The U.S. will route about 19 million doses — roughly 75 percent — through the global vaccine aid program COVAX, the White House said Wednesday. The Biden administration will send the remaining 25 percent of the doses directly to specific countries. The White House announcement comes after months of debate within the administration about whether it could spare shots despite weakening U.S. demand and a growing surplus of doses. Officials also struggled to prioritize requests for vaccines from more than four dozen countries amid surging infections and deaths around the globe. more...
Christina Wilkie, Rich Mendez

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he has ordered a closer intelligence review of what he said were two equally plausible scenarios of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden revealed that earlier this year he tasked the intelligence community with preparing “a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of Covid-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.” “As of today, the U.S. Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” Biden said in a statement. more...
Brian Naylor

President Biden announced Wednesday that Americans have received 200 million COVID-19 vaccinations since he took office, double his initial goal of 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, and what he called "an incredible achievement for the nation." Biden, who will officially cross the 100-day mark next week, also announced the availability of tax credits to employers who give their workers paid leave to get a shot. "No working American should lose a single dollar from their paycheck because they are doing their patriotic duty to get vaccinated," Biden said. more...
By Morgan Chalfant

President Biden on Monday mourned the more than 500,000 Americans lost to the novel coronavirus and called for unity in the battle against the pandemic. In personal remarks from the White House, Biden reflected on the “truly grim, heartbreaking milestone” of surpassing 500,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19. He described his own experiences of grief and losing loved ones as he paid tribute to those who have died over the past year. “As a nation, we can’t accept such a cruel fate,” Biden said. “While we have been fighting this pandemic for so long, we have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow. We have to resist viewing each life as a statistic or a blur or on the news. We must do so to honor the dead but, equally important, care for the living, for those left behind.” more...
The guidelines released Friday don't require Covid-19 vaccinations for all educators before returning to classrooms.
By Safia Samee Ali and Corky Siemaszko

CHICAGO — A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention roadmap for reopening the nation’s schools during the Covid-19 pandemic got a passing grade Friday from powerful teachers unions. “Today, the CDC met fear of the pandemic with facts and evidence,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a statement. “For the first time since the start of this pandemic, we have a rigorous road map, based on science, that our members can use to fight for a safe reopening.” Calling the CDC’s proposals “an informed, tactile plan,” Weingarten said it “has the potential to help school communities around the country stay safe by defining the mitigation and accommodation measures, and other tools educators and kids need, so classrooms can once again be vibrant places of learning and engagement.” video...
By Christina Zhao

President Joe Biden has blamed the current pace of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout on former President Donald Trump, saying the previous administration's handling of the pandemic was "even more dire than we thought." In an interview with CBS Evening News that aired ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl, host Norah O'Donnell told Biden that "at the current rate of 1.3 million doses a day, it's going to take almost a year to get" to herd immunity. She noted that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration's chief medical adviser, has said that 75 percent of Americans need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity from the virus. "One of the disappointments was, when we came into office, the circumstances relating to how the administration was handling COVID, [it] was even more dire than we thought," Biden said, before clarifying that he's referring to the Trump administration. more...
By Kevin Liptak, Sara Murray and Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) The Biden administration announced Tuesday it will begin direct shipments of coronavirus vaccines to retail pharmacies next week, expanding points of access for Americans to receive shots as concerns about variants of the virus expand. "Millions of Americans turn to their local pharmacies every day for their medicines, flu shots, and much more. And pharmacies are readily accessible in most communities, with most Americans living within five miles of a pharmacy," White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said in a briefing. The program, which will begin rolling out February 11, will start at about 6,500 stores that will receive a total of 1 million doses before eventually expanding, Zients said. The administration also announced it is increasing the weekly allocation of vaccines going to states, tribes and territories by an additional 5%, bringing the weekly total of vaccines purchased per week a minimum of 10.5 million. more...
Officials work to pinpoint doses in pipeline between federal distribution and administration by states.
Jessica Glenza

The Biden administration has spent its first week in office attempting to manually track down 20m vaccine doses in the pipeline between federal distribution and administration at clinic sites, when a dose finally reaches a patient’s arm. The Trump administration’s strategy pushed the response to the coronavirus pandemic to individual states and omitted pipeline tracking information between distribution and when the shot is actually administered, Biden administration officials told Politico. The lack of data has now forced federal health department officials to spend hours on the phone tracking down vaccine shipments, the news website reported. “Nobody had a complete picture,” Dr Julie Morita, a member of the Biden transition team and executive vice-president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, told Politico. “The plans that were being made were being made with the assumption that more information would be available and be revealed once they got into the White House.” As of Saturday, 49 million doses of vaccine have been distributed by the federal government, but only 27 million administered by states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). more...
Doses should be flowing. But instead, states are complaining of vaccine shortages. And Team Biden officials don’t know exactly what the holdup is.
Erin Banco

Millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine are likely lost in the complex system to distribute the shots, U.S. officials believe. And no one working on the federal response to the coronavirus is quite sure why. Members of President Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force have spent their first days in office working overtime to find an answer to this puzzle. So far, one hasn’t emerged. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 41.4 million doses have been handed out to the states. Only 21.8 million have been administered. Officials say they think there is a vaccine surplus, although how large of one is unclear. Bottom line: Doses should be flowing, they said But instead, states are complaining of vaccine shortages. more...
Jessica Glenza

Joe Biden’s new administration is faced with a monumental task in curbing the deadliest wave of the Covid-19 pandemic so far in a race against time before a new, more contagious coronavirus variant threatens already strained US health resources. The Biden administration has mere weeks to speed vaccine deployment, and convince more Americans to wear masks, wash hands and social distance. And it must be done amid a rocky transition, critical supply shortfalls, widespread new infections, shaky public trust and a vaccine rollout that “has been a dismal failure so far”. “Let me be very clear, things are going to continue to get worse before they get better,” said Biden, at a Covid-19 briefing on Thursday afternoon. “The memorial we held last night,” to mark 400,000 American deaths, “will not be our last one. The death toll will likely top 500,000 next month.” more...
By Jordan Williams

Anthony Fauci on Friday said that a lack of facts “likely did” cost lives over the last year in the nation’s efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic. In an appearance on CNN, the nation's leading infectious diseases expert was directly asked whether a “lack of candor or facts” contributed to the number of lives lost during the coronavirus pandemic over the past year. “You know it very likely did,” Fauci said. “You know I don’t want that ... to be a sound bite, but I think if you just look at that, you can see that when you’re starting to go down paths that are not based on any science at all, that is not helpful at all, and particularly when you’re in a situation of almost being in a crisis with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths that we have." more...
America’s top infectious diseases expert had a tortuous relationship with Trump and was increasingly sidelined
David Smith and Julian Borger in Washington

Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert in the US, spoke on Thursday of a “liberating feeling” of being able to speak scientific truth about the coronavirus without fear of “repercussions” from Donald Trump. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, endured a tortuous relationship with the former president and was increasingly sidelined from public briefings. But the 80-year-old returned to the White House podium on Thursday after Joe Biden released a national Covid-19 strategy and signed 10 executive orders to combat a pandemic that has now claimed more than 400,000 lives in the US. “One of the things that we’re going to do is to be completely transparent, open and honest,” Fauci told reporters. “If things go wrong, not point fingers, but to correct them. And to make everything we do be based on science and evidence. more...
Will Feuer

The Biden administration is trying to figure out exactly what’s holding up the national Covid-19 vaccine rollout, searching for any hiccups in the manufacturing process, suppliers and distribution networks, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday. President Joe Biden has vowed to have 100 million shots of vaccine administered in his first 100 days in office, a task that would require the U.S. to modestly accelerate the current rate of vaccination. Some large states, though, are telling the federal government they have capacity to vaccinate even more people but aren’t getting enough doses. more...
Elisha Fieldstadt

The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that the Covid-19 vaccine would not be widely available by late February as the Trump administration previously said. The new administration is determined to meet the goal of 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses in 100 days, Dr. Rochelle Walensky told Savannah Guthrie on NBC's "TODAY" show. However, the shots won't be available for just anyone in pharmacies, like the flu vaccine is, by late February, as former Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Guthrie last month. "We are going to, as part of our plan, put the vaccine in pharmacies. Will it be in every pharmacy in this country by that timeline? I don't think so," Walensky said. "I don't think late February, we're going to have vaccine in every pharmacy in this country." "After 100 days, there are still a lot of Americans who need vaccine, so we have our pedal to the metal to make sure that we can get as much vaccine out there," she said. "We recognize this is the most immediate emergency to get this country back to health." more...
Brett Molina USA TODAY

Amazon is offering its help to President Joe Biden with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, while seeking to get its employees inoculated "at the earliest appropriate time." In a letter written to Biden and dated Wednesday, Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Dave Clark said the e-commerce giant is prepared to leverage its operations to help vaccinate 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of the president's administration. "Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against COVID-19, and we stand ready to assist you in this effort," wrote Clark. more...
By Betsy Klein and Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN

(CNN) President Joe Biden's first full day in office Thursday will focus on getting the Covid-19 pandemic under control, rolling out his national strategy that includes several executive actions related to vaccinations and testing in hopes of moving the federal response in a different direction. The day after being sworn-in, Biden plans to sign at least 10 executive orders, memorandums and directives focused on tackling the pandemic, which, as of Thursday morning, has claimed the lives of more than 400,000 Americans and infected over 24 million in the US. And he is set to present some of his initiatives to the public at 2 p.m. ET and his press secretary and Dr. Anthony Fauci will answer questions at 4 p.m. ET. Biden will sign an order ramping up supplies for vaccination, testing and personal protective equipment and another boosting development of therapeutics to treat Covid-19. Following through on his campaign proposals, Biden will sign two executive orders creating a National Pandemic Testing Board to improve US coronavirus testing capacity and a Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force to ensure an "equitable" pandemic response and recovery. Another executive order will enhance the nation's collection, production, sharing and analysis of data about the virus. more...
By Peter Sullivan

President Biden's coronavirus team is faulting the Trump administration for what it's calling a lack of planning in the government's COVID-19 response that is now forcing officials to ramp up federal action. "What we're inheriting is so much worse than we could have imagined," Jeff Zients, Biden's coronavirus response coordinator, said on a call with reporters. Biden is slated to take several executive actions on Thursday, including directing agencies to make more aggressive use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to direct companies to increase manufacturing of supplies for testing, vaccines and protective equipment for health workers. more...
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Deep in the deadliest coronavirus wave and facing worrisome new mutations, President Joe Biden will kick off his national COVID-19 strategy to ramp up vaccinations and testing, reopen schools and businesses and increase the use of masks — including a requirement that Americans mask up for travel. Biden also will address inequities in hard-hit minority communities as he signs 10 pandemic-related executive orders on Thursday. Those orders are a first step, and specific details of many administration actions are still being spelled out. The new president has vowed to take far more aggressive measures to contain the virus than his predecessor, starting with stringent adherence to public health guidance. He faces steep obstacles, with the virus actively spreading in most states, slow progress on the vaccine rollout and political uncertainty over whether congressional Republicans will help him pass a $1.9 trillion economic relief and COVID response package. “We need to ask average Americans to do their part," said Jeff Zients, the White House official directing the national response. “Defeating the virus requires a coordinated nationwide effort." more...
By MJ Lee, CNN

(CNN) Newly sworn in President Joe Biden and his advisers are inheriting no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration, sources tell CNN, posing a significant challenge for the new White House. The Biden administration has promised to try to turn the Covid-19 pandemic around and drastically speed up the pace of vaccinating Americans against the virus. But in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration's Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States. "There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch," one source said. Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from "square one" because there simply was no plan as: "Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence." more...
By Keith Laing and Alan Levin

President Joe Biden will push for additional travel safety during the coronavirus pandemic by requiring people to wear masks in airports and on planes while enforcing quarantines for people who arrive in the U.S. from other countries. In an executive order he will issue Thursday, his second day in office, Biden will codify an action by former President Donald Trump on Jan. 12 to require a negative Covid-19 test before flying to the U.S. from other nations, according to a Biden administration fact sheet. The order will be coupled with one requiring masks on federal properties that was signed by Biden on Wednesday. The language of the orders hadn’t been released so it’s difficult to assess how the various provisions will be enforced. All U.S. carriers have some kind of requirement that passengers cover their faces, as do many airports and transit systems. But the federal mask requirement could put teeth into policies now written and enforced by the airlines, which have limited remedies, such as refusing to allow customers to board future flights. more...
Will Feuer

On his first full day in office, President Joe Biden released details Thursday of his sweeping plan to combat the coronavirus, announcing 10 executive orders and directing agencies to use wartime powers to require U.S. companies to make N95 masks, swabs and other equipment to fight the pandemic. The president’s plan emphasizes ramping up testing for the coronavirus, accelerating the pace of vaccinations and providing more funding and direction to state and local officials. A key component of the plan is restoring trust with the American public. It also focuses on vaccinating more people, safely reopening schools, businesses and travel as well as slowing the spread of the virus. “The National Strategy provides a roadmap to guide America out of the worst public health crisis in a century,” the plan says. “America has always risen to the challenge we face and we will do so now.” more...
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