President-elect Joe Biden will be putting the COVID-19 pandemic at the top of his list of priorities when he takes office in January.
“It will be the first priority, the second priority and the third priority — to deal with Covid and bring down the spread and bring down the death rate,” Biden told The New York Times on Wednesday.
He called the current rate of infection “staggering.”
Biden added, “It’s going to be incredibly high — the damage and the death toll.”
He explained he believes Americans understand the need to slow the spread.
“There’s a new sense of urgency on the part of the public at large,” Biden said.
He continued, “The American public is being made painfully aware of the extent and damage and incredibly high cost of failing to take the kind of measures we’ve been talking about.”
Biden on Tuesday reminded Americans the days ahead are not going to be easy, as IJR previously reported.
“Our darkest days in the battle against COVID are ahead of us, not behind us, so we need to prepare ourselves, to steel our spines as frustrating as it is to hear. It’s going to take patience, persistence, and determination to beat this virus,” he said.
Over 1 million doses of the vaccine have been administered just ten days after they were shipped out, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as IJR previously reported.
More than 9 million doses have been distributed.
Biden received the vaccine publicly on Monday.
He told reporters, “We owe these folks a lot. The scientists and the people who put this together, the frontline workers, the people who were the ones that did the clinical work. It’s just amazing.”
Biden credited the Trump administration with “getting this off the ground, Operation Warp speed.”
He went on, “I also think that it’s worth saying that there’s great hope. I’m doing this to demonstrate that people should be prepared, when it’s available, to take the vaccine.”