WASHINGTON – President Biden on Thursday unveiled a list of new executive orders and presidential guidelines designed to accelerate the production of Covid-19 supplies, increase testing capacity and require the use of a mask during interstate travel – part of a national strategy 200-page pandemic report he announced at an event at the White House.
Together, the orders signal Biden’s first priorities in building a more centralized federal response to the spread of the coronavirus. Some of them reflect actions taken during the Trump administration, while most seek to change the course.
Here’s what the orders are intended to do.
Increase the pace of manufacturing and testing.
One request asks agency leaders to check for shortages in areas such as personal protective equipment and vaccine supplies, and to identify where the government could invoke the Defense Production Act to increase manufacturing. The White House said it could use the Korean War-era law, which the Trump administration used in its vaccine development program, to increase production of a type of syringe that allows pharmacists to extract an extra dose of vaccine vials .
Biden’s team said they had identified 12 critical “immediate supply deficits” for the pandemic response, including N95 surgical masks and isolation gowns, as well as cotton swabs, reagents and pipettes used in the tests.
“On the side of asymptomatic screening, we are woefully in low capacity, so we need money to really speed up the tests, which are so important for reopening schools and businesses,” said Jeffrey D. Zients, the new Covid-19 White House coordinator for answer.
Another order establishes a Pandemic Testing Board, an idea taken from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s War Production Board, to increase testing. The new administration is promising to expand the national supply of rapid tests, to double test supplies and to increase the laboratory space for testing and surveillance of coronavirus outbreaks.
“This effort will ensure that we get to the tests where they are needed and where they are most needed, helping schools and businesses to reopen safely and protecting the most vulnerable, such as those living in long-term care institutions,” said Biden in his Comments Thursday.
Require the use of a mask during interstate travel.
Biden promised to use his powers as president to influence the use of masks wherever legally permitted, including on federal properties and on trips that cross state borders. An order issued on Thursday requires wearing a mask at airports and on many planes, intercity buses and trains.
The same order also requires international travelers to prove that they have a recent negative Covid-19 test before leaving for the United States and comply with the quarantine guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as soon as they land.
Form better data collection systems.
An order asks the secretary of health and human services and the White House’s Covid-19 response coordinator to reassess the federal government’s Covid-19 data collection systems and issue a report on their findings. He also calls on the heads of “all executive departments and agencies” to collect and share data related to the coronavirus.
The Biden Administration
The Trump administration struggled last year to establish a centralized system, pitting competing programs from the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC against each other. Alex M. Azar II, the former secretary of health and human services, ordered hospitals to send daily reports of virus cases to a private provider who transmitted them to a central database in Washington, instead of the CDC, which previously hosted the data. The decision, which remains in effect, angered CDC scientists.
Establish a health equity task force.
Another request creates a “health equity task force” Covid-19, which will recommend how to get more funding for parts of the population particularly affected by the virus, analyzing needs by race, ethnicity, geography and disability, among other factors. Biden said on Thursday that the task force would address the hesitation to get the vaccines.
The panel, based at the Department of Health and Human Services, is part of a larger effort by the Biden government to draw more attention to the persistent racial and ethnic disparities in access to health care, as minorities have been hospitalized and died from Covid-19 at substantially higher rates. Mr. Biden appointed Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, an associate professor of internal medicine, public health and administration at Yale, to lead the task force.
Publish guidelines for schools and workers.
Mr. Biden issued an order designed to protect workers’ health during the pandemic, telling the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to disclose new guidance to employers. The order also calls on the agency to step up enforcement of existing rules to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the workplace.
The president also instructed the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services to issue new guidelines on how to reopen schools safely – a major source of controversy during the summer, when White House and health department officials pressured the CDC to minimize the risk to send students back.
Find more treatments for Covid-19 and future pandemics.
The Biden government is calling on the secretary of health and human services and the director of the National Institutes of Health to draw up a plan to support the study of new drugs for Covid-19 and future public health crises through large randomized trials. The treatments must be those that “can be easily manufactured, distributed and administered, both nationally and internationally”, according to the decree.
The emphasis on randomized trials follows two emergency approvals – for convalescent plasma and the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine – that marked the Food and Drug Administration last year. Federal health officials, including FDA scientists, remain upset about the agency’s decisions, under pressure from the Trump administration, to release treatments without strong evidence from randomized tests.