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COVID-19 task forces: Who's on Biden's and Trump's?

President Trump's White House Coronavirus Task Force formed in late January. President-elect Biden announced his board days after winning the 2020 election.

As the COVID-19 pandemic heads into its eighth month with no signs of letting up before 2020 is over, both President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden are ramping up efforts to combat the virus in their own respective ways.

One of those ways is through advisory boards of people tasked with being the main points of communication between efforts to fight the coronavirus and the American people.

Trump's White House Coronavirus Task Force was formed in late January. Biden announced his advisory board days after being projected the winner of the 2020 presidential election and convened the group last week as he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris move forward with the transition process.

Here is who's on each task force:

White House Coronavirus Task Force

  • Mike Pence: Vice President of the United States, chair of the task force
  • Dr. Deborah Birx: Response coordinator. A former Army colonel, she's also been in charge of the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and U.S. participation in the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
  • Dr. Jerome Adams: U.S. Surgeon General
  • Alex Azar: Secretary of Health and Human Services; former top executive at Eli Lilly
  • Dr. Robert Redfield: Director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci: Head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health
  • Ken Cuccinelli: Acting U.S. Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security 
  • Stephen Biegun: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
  • Robert Blair: Senior Advisor to the White House Chief of Staff 
  • Dr. Ben Carson: U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
  • Dr. Francis Collins: Director of the National Institutes of Health
  • Kelvin Droegemeier: Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
  • Thomas Engels: Administrator, Health Resources and Services Administration
  • Joe Grogan: Director, Domestic Policy Council
  • Stephen Hahn: Commissioner of Food and Drugs
  • Derek Kan: Executive Associate Director, Office of Management and Budget
  • Larry Kudlow: Director, National Economic Council
  • Chris Liddell: White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Coordination
  • Dr. Peter Marks: Director of the Center of Biologics Evaluation and Research
  • Steven Mnuchin: Secretary of the Treasury
  • Robert O'Brien: National Security Advisor
  • Sonny Perdue: Secretary of Agriculture
  • Matthew Pottinger: Deputy National Security Advisor
  • Eugene Scalia: Secretary of Labor
  • Joe Szabat: Acting Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy
  • Dr. Seema Verma: Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
  • Robert Wilkie: Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Biden's COVID-19 Advisory Board

  • Dr. Vivek Murthy: Co-chair, former Surgeon General
  • Dr. David Kessler: Co-chair, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner
  • Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith: Co-chair, Yale University professor and researcher
  • Dr. Luciana Borio: Former biodefense specialist on the National Security Council
  • Dr. Rick Bright: Immunologist and a virologist. He was ousted as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority after criticizing the federal government's response to the pandemic under President Trump.
  • Dr. Ezekiel Emanual: Oncologist and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
  • Dr. Atul Gawande: Professor of surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital and at Harvard Medical School. Served as a senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration.
  • Dr. Celine Gounder: Clinical assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Served as assistant commissioner and director of the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control at New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
  • Dr. Julie Morita: Executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; helped lead Chicago's Department of Public Health for nearly 20 years.
  • Dr. Michael Osterholm: Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; former science envoy for health security for the State Department.
  • Loyce Pace: Executive director and president of the Global Health Council; previously served at the American Cancer Society.
  • Dr. Robert Rodriguez: Professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.
  • Dr. Eric Goosby: Infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. During the Clinton administration, he was the founding director of the largest federally-funded HIV/AIDS program.

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