Biden Covid Adviser Says He’ll Invoke Defense Production Act For Coronavirus Vaccine

EXCERPT:

HOST: “What, if anything, will change in three weeks under President Biden, what policy levels can be pulled that haven’t yet already been tried.”
GOUNDER: “Well, you will see him invoking the Defense Production Act. The idea there is to make sure that the personal protective equipment, the test capacity and the raw materials for the vaccines are produced in adequate supply so that those aren’t limiting steps in all of this and I think you’re also going to see a major increase in testing. You’re going to see a lot more testing, because if we don’t see those invisible, so to speak, the mild and asymptomatic cases of disease if you don’t know they exist, it’s very difficult to prevent spread from those people. And so you are going to see a big increase in testing. We’re also going to see an increase in genomic surveillance, which is where you track the slowly accumulating mutations in the virus genetic material, and that allows you to pick up on new variants like the one that has been picked up in the U.K., like in South Africa, and we did not do that routinely. We have the technology we just chose not to spend the money on that kind of public health surveillance.”