President-elect Joe Biden has announced a team to shape his COVID-19 plan. Biden, who had made fighting the pandemic his top priority, named a 13-member advisory board on Sunday to ¡°shape my approach to managing¡± the surge in cases and the search for a vaccine.
It is co-chaired by former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy,former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) David Kessler and YaleSchool of Medicine¡¯s Marcella Nunez-Smith.
Here's a look at the Indian-Americans who he has appointed to the board.
Vivek Hallegere Murthy is a physician and former viceadmiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who served as thenineteenth Surgeon General of the United States.
The appointment of Murthy comes at a time when the UnitedStates is witnessing a record number of COVID-19 infections.
Murthy, 43, who originally hails from Karnataka, wasappointed America¡¯s 19th Surgeon General by then-president Barack Obama in2014.
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During his tenure, he cautioned US doctors in a publicletter about their prescription of painkillers, sounded the alarm on teene-cigarette use and called to treat gun violence as a public health issue,which led to opposition from Republican senators.
The son of immigrants from India, Murthy received an MD andMBA from Yale and later joined Harvard Medical School's faculty in internalmedicine, according to his website.
Indian-American surgeon Dr Atul Gawande has beenincluded in Joe Biden's COVID-19 task force that will guide the President-electon dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.?The 55-year-old Boston-based surgeon is known for hiswritings and books about the medical field, and has expressed confidence that the viruscan be brought under control, and lives and livelihoods can be saved.
Dr Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospitalin Boston, is a professor at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of HealthPolicy and Management at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
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Dr Gawande was a senior adviser in the US Department ofHealth and Human Services under former President Bill Clinton. Before joiningmedical school, Gawande had been a part of Bill Clinton's presidentialcampaign.
Dr Atul Gawande's father Atmaram Gawande was born inMaharashtra and his mother Sushila Gawande, who hailed from Gujarat,met in New York during medical school. They got married and moved to Athens inOhio to practise as doctors.
Dr. Celine Gounder is a clinical assistant professor ofmedicine and infectious diseases at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and apracticing HIV/infectious diseases specialist and internist, epidemiologist,journalist and filmmaker, her websitesays.
Celine Gounder is also of Indian origin, in an interview onthe Princeton Alumni Weekly, Gounder said, "I started at Princeton at theage of 16, I was very young when I started. And still trying to figure out whatI wanted to do in life, and my father was from India, and sort of a typicaltiger Asian parent, and he really wanted me to be the next Bill Gates."
She received her BA in Molecular Biology from PrincetonUniversity, her Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Johns HopkinsBloomberg School of Public Health, and her MD from the University ofWashington.?
Dr. Gounder was an intern and resident in Internal Medicine atHarvard¡¯s Massachusetts General Hospital, and a post-doctoral fellow inInfectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University. She was elected a fellow ofthe Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2016 and featured in the IDSA¡¯s2017 Annual Report. In 2017, People Magazine named her one of 25 Women Changingthe World.
"Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic is one of the most important battles our administration will face, and I will be informed by science and by experts," Biden said.
New cases are rising in at least 40 states, with more than 9.3 million total infections and more than 236,000 deaths, the media release said.
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