New Administration Releases Health Care–Related Initiatives and Executive Actions

On January 22, 2021, President Joe Biden and his administration unveiled several executive orders and memoranda.

Executive Orders signed January 21 include:

• Establishing the COVID-19 Pandemic Testing Board and Ensuring a Sustainable Public Health Workforce for COVID-19 and Other Biological Threats: Establishes a Pandemic Testing Board to identify issues and assist in implementation of testing solutions; directs actions to address the cost of COVID-19 testing; establishes a public health workforce plan.
• Protecting Worker Health and Safety: Addresses potential changes within OSHA and at state level to better protect workers from COVID-19 and ensure that workers previously not identified but at risk have adequate protections.
• Supporting the Reopening and Continuing Operation of Schools and Early Childhood Education Providers: Identifies actions to assist in the safe reopening of schools and early childhood education.
• Ensuring an Equitable Pandemic Response and Recovery: Establishes a COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force; Identifies actions to ensure equitable response, including those to address vaccine hesitancy.
• Sustainable Public Health Supply Chain: Requires an immediate inventory of response supplies and identification of areas of need; directs use of Defense Production Act to address shortages.
• Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 and Future High-Consequence Public Health Threats: Enhances COVID-19 data collection and seeks to strengthen public health infrastructure.
• Improving and Expanding Access to Care and Treatments for COVID-19: Mandates development of plans to support research that assist in advancing COVID-19 therapies; seeks to improve capacity to address COVID-19 in a variety of settings.
• Promoting COVID-19 Safety in Domestic and International Travel: Immediately requires masks on domestic forms of transportation (airplanes, trains, buses, etc) and requires negative COVID-19 tests, quarantine, or a combination thereof for entry into the United States from travel abroad.

Memoranda issued on January 21 include:

• Directive to Extend Federal Support to Governor’s Use of National Guard to Respond to COVID-19 and to Increase Reimbursement and other Assistance Provided to States: Provides full federal funding for National Guard response to COVID-19; Provides fully-funded assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to state, local, and tribal efforts to reopen and operate schools, child care facilities, healthcare systems, shelters, transit systems, and others.