SCOOP: MEET BIDEN's COVID ADVISERS — The transition team is announcing its advisory panel on Monday, which includes about a half-dozen unreported names that POLITICO's Dan Diamond scooped on Sunday night.
The panel includes: — RICK BRIGHT, who was ousted as chief of BARDA and became a major critic of the Trump administration before leaving government last month. — ATUL GAWANDE, the high-profile surgeon and New Yorker writer who most recently led Haven, the joint venture between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPM. Gawande also served as an HHS senior adviser during the Clinton administration, a role that he discussed on POLITICO's "Pulse Check" podcast in 2017. — LUCIANA BORIO, who served as the FDA's acting chief scientist and on the National Security Council during the Trump administration. — MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, who's achieved renown as an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota. The task force also includes UCSF's Eric Goosby, who helped shape HIV/AIDS policy during the Clinton and Obama administration; UCSF emergency physician Robert Rodriguez; and Loyce Pace of the Global Health Council. POLITICO's Alice Miranda Ollstein, Theodoric Meyer and Alex Thompson scooped the planned task force last week. Its co-chairs are former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former FDA Commissioner David Kessler and Yale's Marcella Nunez-Smith. MEANWHILE: THE WHITE HOUSE COVID TASK FORCE is set to meet today, led by Pence. The panel has languished in recent weeks as Trump played down the raging pandemic ahead of Election Day, and Pence has been absent from key planning calls. Speaking of the pandemic … BIDEN INHERITS RAGING VIRUS — The United States' coronavirus outbreak is on pace to hit nearly 1 million new cases a week by the end of the year — a scenario that could overwhelm health systems across much of the country and further complicate Biden's attempts to coordinate a response, POLITICO's Dan Goldberg and Alice Miranda Ollstein report. Biden and his allies have vowed to confront looming shortages of protective gear for health workers and oversee distribution of masks, test kits and vaccines while beefing up contact tracing and reengaging with the World Health Organization. But all of these actions — a sharp departure from the Trump administration's patchwork response that put the burden on states— will have to wait until Biden takes office. — The nation's health system is buckling under the load of the resurgent outbreak. The number of Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 has spiked to 57,000, up from 33,000 one month ago. In many areas of the country, shortages of ICU beds and staff are leaving patients piled up in emergency rooms. And nearly 1,200 people died on Friday alone, according to the Covid Tracking Project. The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts 370,000 Americans will be dead by Inauguration Day, exactly one year after the first U.S. case of Covid-19 was reported. "November is going to be really rough on all of us," New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a contender to lead HHS in Biden's administration, said Thursday. "There's nothing we can do, nothing, that will change the trajectory. … It is too late to dramatically reduce the number of deaths. November is done." LOOKING FORWARD: WHAT DOES A BIDEN HHS LOOK LIKE? — PULSE has heard the Biden team weighing myriad names for senior roles, including Obama alums who have gone off to run state health departments like North Carolina's Mandy Cohen, Wisconsin's Andrea Palm and Michigan's Robert Gordon . Former FDA principal deputy commissioner Josh Sharfstein is also well-positioned for a top health job in the Biden administration, alongside fellow Obama alums like Murthy and Emanuel. There's also a push to have a demographically diverse group of appointees at HHS, reflecting a message that animated the Biden-Harris campaign. "In health policy, there's a deep bench of dozens of people, immensely qualified and diverse — all the flowers coming to bloom from the seeds that Obama and Biden planted," said Ken Baer, who was a senior OMB official under Obama. — It's a notable contrast with the situation the Trump transition team faced in late 2016. Some well-known conservative health policy wonks were turned off by Trump's rhetoric; others weren't able to pass the White House's purity tests, having criticized Trump before the election. As a result, the early Trump HHS ended up staffed with an eclectic mix of political appointees, including some with little or no prior experience in health care. Among the additional HHS questions that PULSE is weighing this week: — How quickly does the Biden team move to fill senior roles, given the Senate uncertainty? With the Georgia run-offs still two months away, it's not clear who will control the chamber — and what that means for jobs that require confirmation, like HHS secretary or CMS administrator. But unlike other senior health positions, CDC director doesn't require Senate confirmation, and that could be an early priority. — Do ousted Democratic pols land at the Humphrey building too? Former GOP members like Renee Ellmers and John Fleming found homes in the Trump-era HHS, and PULSE is wondering if Democrats who lost their recent congressional races could follow that path. (Or in Rep. Donna Shalala's case, return to HHS in some role, 20 years after she served as secretary.) A person who's spoken with Rep. Joe Kennedy, who's been outspoken on mental health issues and a critic of Trump's health department, said he's open to serving in the Biden administration, if asked. — Who's going to be the public face? After promising to reverse the pandemic's problems, the Biden team will face a messaging challenge. And while Biden has promised to embrace infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, even Fauci, renowned for his work ethic, can't do media around the clock. So who to tap for reinforcements? Ashish Jha, the recently installed dean of Brown's public health school, told PULSE he wasn't looking to leave Rhode Island. But the telegenic Jha, who's gained a high profile during the Covid crisis, acknowledged that "it's a critical time in our country." "I am happy to help from either the inside or outside — we are in a very bad place as a country and we need to get through it," Jha said. — What happens at HHS for the next 10 weeks? There's still much left unfinished under Trump, with appointees working to finalize a slew of rules and policies. (Some officials are also tight-lipped about next steps, given Trump's efforts to fight the election results and the White House refusing to concede.) PULSE will take a closer look at where the department stands later this week. | 
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