US President-elect Joe Biden received his first injected dose of the Covid-19 vaccine live on television Monday in an effort to increase confidence in its safety before its wide distribution next year.
Biden has said he would make fighting the coronavirus, which has killed more than 315,000 Americans and infected more than 17.5 million, his top priority when he takes office on January 20. At 78, he is in the high-risk group. for highly contagious respiratory disease.
A Democrat, Biden will inherit the logistical challenges of distributing the vaccine to hundreds of millions of Americans, as well as the task of persuading people who fear its development was rushed for political reasons to take it.
With his black long-sleeved shirt rolled up, Biden received the injection from Tabe Mase, a nurse practitioner and chief of Employee Health Services at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware, in front of reporters. The images were broadcast live on television.
After receiving the injection, a dose of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc, Biden praised medical professionals as “heroes.”
“I’m doing this to show that people need to be prepared when they are available to receive the vaccine. There is nothing to worry about, ”Biden said. His wife, Jill Biden, who received the injection earlier that day, stood by.
But Biden also pointed out that the vaccine would take time to implement and that people should listen to medical experts and not travel for the next vacation if possible.
He gave credit to the scientists who worked on the vaccines, adding: “I think the (Trump) administration deserves some credit for getting this off the ground with Operation Warp Speed.”
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will likely receive the vaccine next week, Biden’s transition team said.
Republican President Donald Trump has frequently downplayed the severity of the pandemic and overseen a response that health experts say was disorganized, arrogant, and at times ignored the science behind disease transmission.
New American economy
Efforts to limit the economic consequences of the pandemic on Americans were boosted Sunday when Congressional leaders agreed to a $ 900 billion package to provide the first new aid in months, with votes likely Monday.
Biden also appointed additional members to his National Economic Council (NEC) on Monday, supplementing his economic policy-making team with people his transition office said would help lift Americans out of the economic crisis.
David Kamin, a White House official to former President Barack Obama, will serve as NEC Deputy Director, and Bharat Ramamurti, former Senior Economic Advisor for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 Presidential Campaign, will serve as NEC Deputy Director for Financial Reform and Protection. to the Consumer, from Biden. the team said in a statement.
Joelle Gamble will serve as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.
“This is not the time to rebuild the way things were; this is the time to build a new American economy that works for everyone,” Biden said in the statement.
Biden had already appointed Brian Deese, who helped lead Obama’s efforts to rescue the auto industry and negotiate the Paris climate accord, to head the council, which coordinates the country’s economic policymaking.
Much of the fate of Biden’s agenda in the White House will hinge on the outcome of a pair of Senate runoff elections in Georgia on January 5 that will determine which party controls the upper house of the US Congress.
Harris traveled to Columbus, Georgia, on Monday to campaign on behalf of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democratic candidates locked in tight races with Republicans in power.
At a rally for the candidates, Harris, currently a California senator, said she would return to Washington later that day to vote on the stimulus package.
When asked by a reporter if there were plans to “fumigate” the White House for concerns about the virus before the Biden administration moved in, Harris said, “I don’t have the current state for that.”
Trump was briefly hospitalized in October with Covid-19, and many of his advisers and White House staff also contracted the virus.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and White House adviser, was also poised to campaign in Georgia for Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
The outgoing president, making unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud, has focused on trying to reverse his electoral defeat even as daily Covid-19 deaths soared. The last risky effort of his campaign was a petition to the US Supreme Court on Sunday that legal experts said would fail.
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