Biden Administration Executive Actions: COVID-19

On January 21, President Biden issued an Executive Order ensuring that the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic would be guided by the best available science and data, further protecting from potential future public health threats. The Executive Order lays out several directives for federal agencies including focusing energy on building public health infrastructure, directing agency heads to share and coordinate COVID-19 data with other agencies, improving federal capacity for data collection practices, and reviewing existing public health data systems for potential areas for improvement. The Department of Health and Human Services is directed to ensure public health data systems that detect and monitor major public health threats are interconnected and interoperable and to review state and local collection of morbidity and mortality data to ensure these systems can quickly respond to emerging developments. The Executive Order also charges the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) director with developing a plan for advancing innovation in public health data and analytics. The Executive Order is available on the White House website.