Biden announces key health team members, plans to fight COVID-19

Dec. 8 (UPI) -- President-elect Joe Biden made announcements Tuesday about his health team and plans to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden nominated Dr. Anthony Fauci as his chief medical adviser on COVID-19. Fauci will also remain in the role of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director.

Since the pandemic began, COVID-19 has infected over 15 million people and killed over 285,000 in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Biden announced three plans to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, which he said he made in consultation with Fauci, at an event in Wilmington, Delaware.

First, Biden, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, will ask everyone to wear masks in public spaces for his initial 100 days in office.

Second, he said he plans to sign an executive order to mandate masks in places like "federal buildings, interstate travel on planes, trains and buses."

Third, his new health team will help get "at least 100 million COVID vaccine shots into the arms of the American people in the first 100 days," he is in office, he said.

He added that they would focus on those most at-risk at first, including health care professionals, long-term care residents and educators as soon as possible.

Biden also announced other key members of his health team, including Jeff Zients, his transition co-chair and a former Obama administration official. Zients will serve as COVID-19 response coordinator and counselor to the president.

He also nominated another Obama administration veteran, Natalie Quillian, to serve as COVID-19 response deputy director.

To serve as chair of COVID-19 equity task force, Biden nominated Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a co-chair of his transition team.

Biden also nominated Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Massachusetts General Hospital chief of the infectious diseases division, to serve as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director.

Fauci, Zients, Quillian, Nunez-Smith, and Walensky will not require Senate confirmation.

Two other nominees will require Senate confirmation.

Xavier Becerra, California's attorney general, was nominated to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services and would be the first Latino in the post if confirmed.

Dr. Vivek Murphy, who served as U.S. surgeon general under the Obama administration, also requires Senate confirmation as nominee for surgeon general.

"It's a team of world-class experts at the top of their fields, crisis-tested, defined by a deep sense of duty, honor and patriotism. Already ready to jump in. They've been advising me, many of them, for a long time," Biden said. "And they're going to get ready on Day One to spare not a single effort to get this pandemic under control."