Biden Names Minnesota Disease Expert To COVID-19 Advisory Board

BOSTON (AP) — As he begins his transition to the presidency, Joe Biden is pivoting from a bitter campaign battle to another fight: reining in the pandemic that has hit the  nation harder than any other.

The U.S. is now averaging more than 100,000 new coronavirus infections a day, frequently breaking records for daily cases. Hospitals in several states are running out of space and staff, and the death toll is soaring.

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.

Among its members is Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

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