Biden picks Becerra as health secretary as he builds team to battle COVID-19

WILMINGTON: President-elect Joe Biden said he will nominate California Attorney General Xavier Becerra for secretary of health and human services on Monday as one of the top officials on his team to fight the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden chose Becerra, 62, a Latino former congressman, as he faces more pressure to add diversity to his cabinet appointments, including complaints from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus about the number of Latinos.

Becerra will lead the health agency as officials struggle to contain a resurgence of the novel coronavirus, including record infections and a daily death toll that has exceeded 2,000 in recent days, and to prepare for a mammoth effort to vaccinate Americans.

More than 281,000 Americans have died from the COVID-19 disease, according to a Reuters tally.

“This team of world-class medical experts and public servants will be ready on day one to mobilize every resource of the federal government to expand testing and masking,” Biden said in a statement, adding that they would “oversee the safe, equitable, and free distribution of treatments and vaccines.”

Biden, who takes office on Jan. 20, has announced top nominees for his national security and economic teams. He has pressed ahead with the transition to the White House even as President Donald Trump refuses to concede the Nov. 3 election and wages a foundering effort to overturn the results. Dozens of Trump’s legal challenges have been rejected by the courts, often in scathing terms.