On Thursday, Jan. 21, President Joe Biden released the “National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness” that outlines seven specific goals to combat the pandemic:
- Goal 1: Restore trust with the American people
- Goal 2: Mount a safe, effective, comprehensive vaccination campaign.
- Goal 3: Mitigate spread through expanding masking, testing, treatment, data, workforce, and clear public health standards.
- Goal 4: Immediately expand emergency relief and exercise the Defense Production Act.
- Goal 5: Safely reopen schools, businesses, and travel, while protecting workers.
- Goal 6: Protect those most at risk and advance equity, including across racial, ethnic and rural/urban lines.
- Goal 7: Restore U.S. leadership globally and build better preparedness for future threats.
President Biden stated that the national plan “launches a full-scale wartime effort to address the supply shortages by ramping up production and protective equipment, syringes, needles, you name it,” and further “And when I say wartime, people kind of look at me like ‘wartime?’ Well, as I said last night, 400,000 Americans have died. That's more than have died in all of World War II. 400,000. This is a wartime undertaking,”
Later that same day, President Biden signed the following nine COVID-19 related executive orders and a memorandum:
This is in addition to the two COVID-19 related executive orders he signed on the first day of his administration that deal with Organizing and Mobilizing the United States Government to Provide a Unified Effective Response to Combat COVID-19 and to Provide United States Leadership on Global Health and Security and Protecting the Federal Workforce and Requiring Mask-Wearing.
We will continue to monitor activity and report as appropriate.
Contact: Paul Penna, Legislative Analyst, ppenna@njlm.org, 609 695-3481, x110.