As US coronavirus cases topped 10 million on Monday, President-elect Joe Biden held a meeting with 13 members of his newly formed COVID-19 …
As US coronavirus cases topped 10 million on Monday, President-elect Joe Biden held a meeting with 13 members of his newly formed COVID-19 advisory board. The group will be instrumental in determining the federal pandemic response under the Biden-Harris administration. At least 10 of Biden’s board members have served the federal government under a previous presidential administration. The board’s co-chairs are Vivek Murthy, who was the surgeon general under the Obama administration; David Kessler, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner under Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the associate dean for health equity research at the Yale School of Medicine. As surgeon general, Murthy saw the US through several public-health crises, including the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic and the 2015-2016 Zika epidemic. As FDA commissioner, Kessler led that agency’s response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Other board members include Dr. Atul Gawande, who was a senior advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the Clinton era, and Dr. Michael Osterholm, an HHS advisor under George W. Bush. They’re joined by Dr. Eric Goosby, who helped coordinate the federal government’s HIV/AIDS response under four presidential administrations from the 1990s until 2013. Biden’s team also consists of two former Trump administration officials. One is Dr. Luciana Borio, the FDA’s former acting chief scientist, who spearheaded an effort to deliver speedier, more accessible flu vaccines. Borio also helped coordinate the national response to Ebola and Zika under President Obama. The second is Dr. Rick Bright, a former HHS official who resigned in October.
