Dr. Vivek Murthy to Co-chair President-elect Joe Biden’s Coronavirus Task Force
President-elect Joe Biden is set to appoint Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy as the co-chair of his Coronavirus task force, to come up with a national plan to contain the spread of Covid-19. Murthy will head the task force with Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith of Yale University, Axios reported.
This may be the first and most important appointment the Biden will be making after being declared President-elect. And tackling the pandemic that has consumed nearly 240,000 American lives and is spreading unchecked all over the country falls into the hands of the Indian American physician who served as a Vice Admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Armed Forces. Dr. Murthy also served as the Surgeon General of the United States during the Obama administration.
The announcement, which is expected to be made on Monday, before Biden has named any of his senior White House staff, signals how high of a priority the pandemic response is to him.
Biden, in his first speech as president-elect in Wilmington, Delaware, said that he will announce “a group of leading scientists and experts as transition advisors” to help implement his pandemic response plan. “Our work begins with getting Covid under control,” he said. “That plan will be built on a bedrock of science. It will be constructed out of compassion, empathy, and concern. I will spare no effort — or commitment — to turn this pandemic around.”