Meet The Three Indian-Americans Part Of US President-Elect Joe Biden¡¯s COVID-19 Task Force

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 Yale School of Medicine¡¯s Marcella Nunez-Smith.

Here's a look at the Indian-Americans who he has appointed to the board.

Vivek Murthy

Twitter/Vivek Murthy

Vivek Hallegere Murthy is a physician and former vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who served as the nineteenth Surgeon General of the United States.

The appointment of Murthy comes at a time when the United States is witnessing a record number of COVID-19 infections.

Murthy, 43, who originally hails from Karnataka, was appointed America¡¯s 19th Surgeon General by then-president Barack Obama in 2014.

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During his tenure, he cautioned US doctors in a public letter about their prescription of painkillers, sounded the alarm on teen e-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 and MBA from Yale and later joined Harvard Medical School's faculty in internal medicine, according to his website.

Dr Atul Gawande

Twitter/Dr Atul Gawande

Indian-American surgeon Dr Atul Gawande has been included in Joe Biden's COVID-19 task force that will guide the President-elect on dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. The 55-year-old Boston-based surgeon is known for his writings and books about the medical field, and has expressed confidence that the virus can be brought under control, and lives and livelihoods can be saved.

Dr Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, is a professor at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

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Dr Gawande was a senior adviser in the US Department of Health and Human Services under former President Bill Clinton. Before joining medical school, Gawande had been a part of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign.

Dr Atul Gawande's father Atmaram Gawande was born in Maharashtra and his mother Sushila Gawande, who hailed from Gujarat, met in New York during medical school. They got married and moved to Athens in Ohio to practise as doctors.

Celine Gounder

Twitter/Celine Gounder

Dr. Celine Gounder is a clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a practicing HIV/infectious diseases specialist and internist, epidemiologist, journalist and filmmaker, her website says.

Celine Gounder is also of Indian origin, in an interview on the Princeton Alumni Weekly, Gounder said, "I started at Princeton at the age of 16, I was very young when I started. And still trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life, and my father was from India, and sort of a typical tiger Asian parent, and he really wanted me to be the next Bill Gates."

She received her BA in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, her Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and her MD from the University of Washington.

Dr. Gounder was an intern and resident in Internal Medicine at Harvard¡¯s Massachusetts General Hospital, and a post-doctoral fellow in Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University. She was elected a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2016 and featured in the IDSA¡¯s 2017 Annual Report. In 2017, People Magazine named her one of 25 Women Changing the World.

The US is currently the world's worst-hit nation from the pandemic.

Joe Biden/Reuters

"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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