U.S. Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) is urging the Trump Administration to reestablish the White House global health security and biothreats directorate within the National Security Council.
In 2016, after the Ebola virus emerged, the Obama administration created the global health and biothreats “czar” position. It was designed to establish a policymaking apparatus to tackle global pandemics. However, the position was eliminated in 2018 by the Trump Administration, and resources for global health preparedness were drastically cut.
Markey is calling on Trump to immediately appoint a qualified individual to respond to the rapidly evolving public health crisis being caused by the 2019 novel Coronavirus.
There have been five cases of the virus in the United States, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus has infected 2,800 people on four continents and has led to the deaths of about 80 people in China. The early symptoms of the coronavirus mimic the flu, so many may wait to seek medical care and unintentionally expose others to it.
“The 2019 coronavirus is not the first, and will not be the last, biothreat the U.S. faces,” Markey wrote to Trump. “The outcome will be inevitably better both for this outbreak and the next if we have in place a single qualified individual to help lead our global health efforts at the highest levels of our federal government. In the U.S., the response to a public health threat is spread across multiple agencies, and to be effective requires far tighter coordination and unity of effort, both at home and abroad.”