//Biden’s new national plan to fight Covid-19, explained

Biden’s new national plan to fight Covid-19, explained

President-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, arrive at the Capitol for his swearing-in as the 46th president of the United States. | Patrick Semansky/AP

Biden’s first- and second-day executive actions take aim at the coronavirus.

President Joe Biden already announced a $400 billion Covid-19 plan as part of his $1.9 trillion economic relief proposal. But while he waits for Congress to act on those proposals, Biden is taking a dozen executive actions to tackle the US’s most pressing public health crisis.

Behind the executive actions is Biden’s “National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness,” announced Thursday. The plan aims to restore public trust, scale up vaccination, expand testing and masking, reopen schools and businesses safely, and more — all with an eye on equity in terms of race, ethnicity, and urban-rural divides.

The Biden team emphasized that it’ll need