Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Biden Team To Get 11th-Hour Access To Operation Warp Speed Meetings
Politico: Biden Team Gets Access To Warp Speed-Related Meetings
The Trump administration this week will give Biden transition officials their first direct access to certain regular meetings tied to the government's coronavirus vaccine development effort, Operation Warp Speed, a senior administration official told POLITICO. The invite to those meetings comes after POLITICO reported that the Biden team had been denied access to standing meetings on the pandemic response, hampering its planning efforts. (Cancryn, 1/11)
Politico: Biden To Unveil Vaccination Plan This Week
President-elect Joe Biden is set to unveil a sweeping coronavirus vaccination plan on Thursday, calling the nationwide distribution effort his "number one priority." The plan, which Biden teased on Monday, will serve as the incoming administration's roadmap to quickly vaccinating millions of Americans amid frustration over the slow rollout of the initial doses. (Cancryn and Pager, 1/11)
Roll Call: Biden's Choice To Lead USDA Helped Monitor OxyContin Maker
President-elect Joe Biden’s designee for Agriculture secretary worked not only as a top dairy industry executive in 2020 but also as a monitor overseeing Purdue Pharma’s adherence to an agreement to stop aggressively marketing opioid painkillers. Tom Vilsack, CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, also had a lucky streak last year in the Iowa lottery with Powerball winnings of $150,000. (Ferguson, 1/11)
And the president-elect receives his second dose of covid vaccine —
The Hill: Biden Publicly Receives Second Dose Of Coronavirus Vaccine
President-elect Joe Biden publicly received his second dose of the vaccine for the novel coronavirus on Monday in a continued bid to bolster public confidence in the inoculation. “My number one priority is getting vaccine into people’s arms, like I just did today, as rapidly as we can,” Biden, wearing a black face mask, told reporters immediately after receiving his second dose of the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech. (Chalfant, 1/11)
