u.s president joe biden has unveiled a
new plan to tackle his country's covet
19 emergency
announcing the measures on his first
full day in power he said drastic action
is needed
it will include tightening rules on
wearing masks in public
testing will be stepped up and travelers
to the u.s will have to test negative
and quarantine on arrival biden also
wants to speed up the vaccination
program
he's warning though that the pandemic
will get worse in the coming weeks
with the death toll likely to rise from
400 000 to half a million
next month taking
charge of bringing the pandemic under
control
this next one is keeping workers safe
how to do that
a day into his new job president biden
signed a raft of executive orders to
ramp up the federal response to the
corona virus
for the past year we couldn't rely on
the federal government to act with the
urgency and focus and coordination we
needed
and we have seen the tragic cost of that
failure
over 400 000 people have now died in the
u.s
and biden warns the toll is likely to
rise to half a million in february
but he hopes the strategy he's putting
in place
will eventually save many lives knowing
that his mom is in good hands here
our national strategy is comprehensive
it's based on science not politics
it's based on truth not denial and it's
detail
our plan starts with mounting an
aggressive safe
and effective vaccination campaign to
meet our goal of administering
100 million shots in our first hundred
days in office we're on day one
this will be one of the greatest
operational challenges our nation has
ever undertaken
the us is currently administering almost
a million doses a day
but the rollout has been rocky and
several states have complained of scarce
supplies
biden's deploying the defense production
act to help vaccine manufacturers
increase
production he's also implementing
measures to improve
distribution and after being effectively
banished from trump administration
briefings the nation's top infectious
diseases doctor is back
anthony fauci says he feels liberated
the science can now speak
he's optimistic vaccines can suppress
the virus
despite new variants emerging just if we
get
70 to 85 percent of the country
vaccinated
let's say by the end of the summer
middle of the summer i believe by the
time we get to the fall
we will be approaching a degree of
normality it's not going to be perfectly
normal
but one that i think will take a lot of
pressure off the american public
the message from the biden
administration is clear
hope is on the horizon but it will still
take many months to overcome the
pandemic
and the devastation it has wrought
dw's william bluecroft is covering this
story for us william
what's different about joe biden's
approach to fighting the coronavirus
compared to what we saw under donald
trump
i think we heard about it right there in
the report the in a word science
biden already said during the campaign
and when he was president-elect
that he would let science dictate the
agenda and not politics like we saw so
often under the trump administration not
just politics but trump's own
wishes and things that would make him
look good or thought that he would
look good we also heard in the report
how dr anthony fauci who's the white
house is chief science advisor or
infectious disease advisor
uh saying he feels liberated that uh
science is going to lead the way that
basically he can come to a meeting to
advise the
president biden and his advisors on what
to do and if he doesn't know it's okay
to say you don't know you don't have to
make things up just to satisfy him
that said this is a very ambitious roll
out
uh independent science and medical uh
people are saying a hundred million
doses is
a ambitious and b might not even be
enough it's also
uncertain if 100 million doses means 100
million people
or if it means 50 million people if
they're going to go the two-dose route
there's also an enormous amount of
federal agencies that that the u.s
government
can deploy uh that we'll have to see if
really will happen for example osha
that's the federal agency that oversees
workplace safety they've been almost
awol throughout this entire pandemic
well if the cf joe biden
turns to uh this agency is just one
example to make sure that places
that work places are safe for workers so
a lot to see how this 100 day plan
really really works out
well biden's plan also includes a strong
emphasis on mask wearing for example how
receptive
do you think americans will be to his
new approach
it seems americans have for a long time
just mostly needed consistent messaging
from their elected leaders polls show
that a majority of americans
take this uh pandemic seriously and
disapproved of donald trump's handling
of it
and so really what's needed here is
consistent strong science-based
messaging
and while the federal government and joe
biden is somewhat limited in what they
can do
because state and local authorities have
a lot of authority when it comes to
health measures and in for example
enforcing masks
they can definitely set the tone uh that
creates more of a universal response
uh to the pandemic william thank you
very much that was dw's william
bluecroft
well here's a look at some of the other
developments worldwide in
the coronavirus pandemic germany's
public health body the robert
institute says more than 50
000 people in germany have now died from
coronavirus
in spain the easing of travel
restrictions over christmas to allow
families to get together
caused a huge spike in infections
intensive care admissions have increased
by 60 percent
in the last two weeks and the number of
people dying by
suicide in japan has risen for the first
time in over a decade as the pandemic
reverses
years of progress combating a high
suicide rate
japan's health ministry says women and
children in particular are taking their
lives
at higher rates
you