Former Indian American surgeon general has been advising President-elect on pandemic.
Indian American Vivek Murthy, who served as surgeon general under President Barack Obama, is expected to serve as one of the three co-chairs of President elect Joe Biden’s 12-person coronavirus-task force.
The other two co-chairs of the task force to be announced Monday are expected to be former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler and Yale University’s Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, CNN reported.
The announcement is meant to signify how seriously the president-elect plans to focus on a pandemic that has reached a record number of daily infections in the last week, it said.
With nearly a million covid-19 cases and over 240,000 deaths, the US is the world’s worst pandemic-hit nation.
The group, along with Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris, plan to hold frequent televised briefings on the crisis, CNN said citing aides.
UK born Murthy, 43, who originally hails from Karnataka, was the youngest ever to hold the office of surgeon general at the age of 37 when he was named to the post by Obama in 2014.
READ: Vivek Murthy endorses Biden to combat corona, heal the nation (August 21, 2020)
In his victory speech in Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday, Biden said the group of leading scientists and experts would take the Biden-Harris Covid plan and convert it into an action blueprint on Jan 20, the day he takes over as President.
To be built on a bedrock of science, the plan “will be constructed out of compassion, empathy and concern. I will spare no effort — or commitment — to turn this pandemic around,” he said.
During the campaign period, Murthy emerged as one of the top advisors of Biden on public health and coronavirus issues. Many believe that he might be named Biden’s Health Secretary.
In May, the Biden campaign appointed Indian American US House member Pramila Jayapal and Murthy as co-chairs of the Healthcare Task Force.
At a fund raiser organized by Indian-Americans in September attended by Biden, Murthy had said that Biden is the kind of guy he would like to invite home for dinner.
“Joe Biden is the kind of guy I would love to bring home to have dinner with my mom and dad,” he said with homemade ‘Masala Dasa’ on the table.
“He’s authentic. He’s real. And he says what he thinks and that’s something I really love about him… He says what’s on his mind. He’s honest and true,” Murthy said.
“Biden is a man who generally meets with his values and those values are so reliably centered around generosity and community,” he said. “It’s who he is.”
At another fundraiser, Murthy said that Biden’s recognition and appreciation for immigrants and for communities like Indian Americans is forming an incredibly important part of the backbone of the United States.