translated from Spanish: Biden applauds Covid-19 vaccine but advises caution

President-elect Joe Biden on Monday applauded the news of a promising coronavirus vaccine, but warned that Americans should be aggressive with the use of water cover and social estating as infections continue to rise across the country. For their part, the Democrat’s transition team also unveiled the list of experts who will make up the group responsible for responding to COVID-19. While Biden announced to his group of experts, Pfizer announced promising results of a coronavirus vaccine. The company, which developed the vaccine together with German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, said it will file an emergency use application with U.S. regulators at the end of the month.” Even if that is achieved, and some Americans are vaccinated later this year, it will be many more months before there is widespread vaccination in this country,” Biden said in a statement, noting that the vaccine does not change the “urgent reality” that Americans will have to rely on the use of water cover, estating and other mitigation measures in the coming months. While Biden was receiving the vaccine news with cautious optimism, Trump — who said during the presidential campaign that a vaccine could be ready for Election Day. These events coincided with news that the United States exceeded 10 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. The country is now recording an average of 109,000 contagions a day and totals at least 237,000 deaths. Biden’s pandemic response group includes doctors and scientists who have worked in other governments, many of them experts in public health, vaccines and infectious diseases. It is headed by former public health director Vivek Murthy; former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) owner David Kessler and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor and researcher at Yale University.It also highlights the presence of Rick Bright, a vaccine expert and former head of the Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority. Bright reported that he was relegated to a smaller position because he resisted political pressure to allow the use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug promoted by President Donald Trump as a treatment for COVID-19. Public health authorities warn that the country is entering its worst phase of the pandemic with the arrival of winter and the upcoming season of end-of-year holidays, which increase the risk of rapid contagion as Americans travel, shop and celebrate with loved ones.” The next two months are going to be tough, difficult,” said Dr Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist and department president at Yale School of Public Health. “We could see another 100,000 deaths by January.” Other members of Biden’s team include Luciana Borio, a biodefensive specialist; oncologist Ezekiel Emanuel, president of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health; Dr. Atul Gawande, health adviser to the Clinton administration; Dr. Celine Gounder, an expert in infectious diseases, HIV and tuberculosis; pediatrician Julie Morita, immunization specialist; epidemiologist Michael Osterholm; Loyce Pace, global health specialist; Robert Rodriguez, who has studied the mental health of medical professionals responsible for responding to COVID-19; and Dr. Eric Goosby, an expert on infectious diseases and HIV.” Managing the coronavirus pandemic is one of the most important battles our government will face, and I will be guided by science and experts,” Biden said Monday in a statement. Biden campaigned that diagnostic tests would be free and widely accessible, as well as hiring thousands of workers for contact tracking programs and instructing The Centers for Disease Control to offer clear guidelines based on expert recommendations, among other proposals.As a candidate, Biden made the mismanagement of the pandemic at Trump’s hands the central theme of his campaign. But much of Biden’s proposals will require congressional intervention, and he is sure to encounter difficulties in the divided parliamentary chambers. Dr. Phillip Coule, medical director at Augusta University Medical Center in Georgia, said he trusted the country to leave behind the political divisions that have complicated the response to the virus now that the elections are over.” Now that we’ve passed the election, let’s handle this based on in science, not politics, this disease and the pandemic,” he said. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is a Democrat, said he believed that even the COVID-19’s most convinced deniers would take a more conciliatory tone when they assumed Trump’s electoral defeat.” I think the political pressure to deny COVID is gone,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think now you’ll see scientists speak without a cutter. And I think the numbers are going to go up, and Americans will understand how serious it is.” There are legal limits to what the president-elect can do before officially taking office, but he and his transition team must start preparing the job immediately, said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and a former Baltimore health encomisary. , including a national order on the use of masks, should be a priority, he said. Opposition to the use of masks remains a thorny issue, especially in some of the country’s most affected states.” Each state acts quite autonomously on its measures, and we have already seen how that has turned out,” said Ko, Yale’s expert. “This disease needs national and global responses.” Overcoming months of conflicting messages about the pandemic is another complex task Biden must undertake during his transition, said Angela Rasmussen, a virus researcher at Columbia University in New York.” The last year of misinformation, confusion and dechialing people from the White House has ended with confidence that our government can manage this,” he said. “It’s going to be crucial to start communicating that yes, this government will act governed by science.” During his first statements as president-elect, Biden said Saturday that his team will create a plan “based on solid science” and “built with compassion, empathy, and concern.” His collaborators, meanwhile, have spent the days since the elections assuring the public that the government will be ready to respond to the pandemic.” I think there’s a sense of urgency in general,” Pete Buttigieg said Sunday to “Fox News Sunday,” exaspiant to the Democratic candidacy for president and now on Biden’s transition team.In the medical community as a whole there is also hope that a Biden government will help restore American leadership in global public health challenges , including the development and distribution of a vaccine when available. Dr Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the World Health Organization, said she was more optimistic about a Biden government joining Covax, a WHO-led project that aims to help bring vaccines to the neediest people around the world, regardless of whether they live in rich or poor countries.” Everyone recognizes that for a pandemic you can’t have a country-to-country strategy. You need a global strategy,” Swaminathan said, but in Kansas, one of the states that has suffered a significant uptick in the virus in recent weeks, at least one hospital manager was skeptical of what a new president could do to curb the pandemic in america.” I think the damage is done,” said Kris Mathews, administrator of Decatur Health, a small hospital in the rural northwest of the state. “People have already decided how they react to this.”

Original source in Spanish