With the U.S. passing 400,000 COVID deaths President Biden is laying out a multi-faceted, 200-page plan to slow the spread, get kids back in school and vaccines in people’s arms.
“Our national strategy is comprehensive, it’s based on science not politics, it’s based on truth not denial,” said President Biden Thursday.
So what’s in the plan? First, there are vaccine and testing supplies. Fully leveraging the Defense Production Act to prevent potential bottlenecks in vaccine supplies like glass vials and syringes. The Production Act was something the Trump administration used but relied heavily on companies being willing to help.
They also plan to immediately release significant doses of the vaccine to the states and only maintain a small federal reserve. And help the states distribute the vaccines by allowing state and local governments to reimburse vaccine administration expenses through the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund.
They’ll use stadiums and arenas to host large federally run vaccination clinics. And encourage states to expand vaccine eligibility to people over the age of 65, something the Trump administration had already begun doing.
Another place of agreement with the last administration? Reopening schools. Team Biden hopes to have the majority of schools, kindergarten though 8th grade, open in the next 100 days. That means developing a national strategy from the departments of education and health and human services on reopening and expanding testing.
Then there’s masks. While he can’t implement a national mask mandate, masks will be required on all federal property and for all federal employees and contractors as well as in airports.
Another thing that will be different from the last administration...
“Good evening everyone,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
Daily press briefings and regular updates from experts. The last public coronavirus taskforce briefing was two months ago.
The goal to get 100 million vaccinated in 100 days has one big obstacle: people’s willingness to get a vaccine. That’s something else the Biden team plans to attack with an aggressive multi-lingual public education campaign. Amber Strong, Newsy, Northern, Virginia.
