Joe Biden warns U.S. faces more than 600,000 COVID deaths, days after total passing 400,000, as he signs more orders to aid economy

  • President Biden warned the U.S. faces more than 600,000 COVID deaths 
  • ‘A lot of America is hurting. The virus is surging. We’re 400,000 dead, expected to reach well over 600,000,’ he said
  • CDC projected U.S. will have recorded up to 508,000 deaths by mid-February
  • He signed new executive orders to provide food assistance to those in need and extend protections for American workers
  • ‘We cannot, will not let people go hungry,’ he said 
  • One order speeds up delivery of stimulus checks for the 8 million Americans who have not received theirs ye
  • Biden also to look at raising minimum wage to $15 per hour for federal workers
  • He will increase value of SNAP, known as food stamps, for about 12 million families to help them buy additional groceries 
  • 29 million adults – and at least 8 million children – struggle with food insecurity  
  • Biden has signed a series of executive orders his first days in office dealing with overturning Trump policies and helping those devastated by COVID pandemic 

President Joe Biden warned Friday that  the United States faces more than 600,000 COVID deaths as he signed executive orders aimed at helping deal with its impact.

They included measures aimed at providing assistance for those facing food insecurity, protecting American workers and providing economic relief to struggling families.  

‘I’m going to close and summarize this way,’ Biden said at an event Friday in the state dining room of the White House. 

‘A lot of America is hurting. The virus is surging. We’re 400,000 dead, expected to reach well over 600,000. 

‘Families are going hungry. People are at risk of being evicted. Job losses are mounting again. We need to act. No matter how you look at it we need to act.’ 

The president did not indicate when he thought that total would be reached.  

The United States now has more than 24.7 million cases and more than 410,000 deaths. 

The nearest official forecast to 600,000 is from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which projected this week that the country will have recorded up to 508,000 COVID-19 deaths by mid-February. 

New strains of the virus are emerging. And scientists are concerned the mutant coronavirus strain which emerged in south east England may be more deadly than the original. 

President Biden signed executive orders on Friday aimed at providing assistance for those facing food insecurity, protecting American workers and providing economic relief to struggling families

One of the orders Biden will sign Friday will help struggling families buy groceries – above volunteers collect donated food collect as part of the Dr. Martin Luther King Day of service in Pennyslvania

29 million adults – and at least 8 million children – are struggling with food insecurity; above volunteers from the Los Angeles Food Bank help load boxes of food into vehicles

FAST WORK JOE… 1M SHOTS A DAY AHEAD OF TARGET – SO WAS IT TOO EASY? 

More than one million COVID-19 vaccines were given out in the United States Thursday as Joe Biden – just two days into his presidency – laid out his ‘full scale war-time’ plan to reach that exact goal.

Biden has been touting for several weeks now how he will aim to have 100 million Americans inoculated within his first 100 days in office.

Yet just one day after his inauguration, the US recorded 1.3 million COVID-19 vaccines.

The seven-day rolling average for new COVID-19 vaccines being administered is already at 940,000 a day.

The US recorded 1.3 million COVID-19 vaccines yesterday. The seven-day rolling average for new COVID-19 vaccines being administered is already at 940,000 a day

It came as Biden signed a new executive order on Thursday to speed up vaccine delivery and doubled-down on his plan to hand out one million doses per day.

He did not address that the Trump administration had already been on that trajectory to boost the number of shots closer to the one million mark. 

Shots per day jumped more than 800,000 in the days before Biden’s inauguration.

Biden snapped when questioned whether his 100 million shot goal was ambitious enough, saying: ‘When I announced it, you all said it’s not possible. Come on, gimme a break man.’

Meanwhile, some health experts have said even the 100 million goal may not be sufficient to the challenge.

Currently, the US has handed out 18.4 million vaccine doses of the 37.9 million distributed nationwide.  

So far, 5.6 percent of the US population has been vaccinated. 

Dr Anthony Fauci, who is now Biden’s top COVID adviser, has been saying for weeks that the US would soon be giving at least a million vaccinations a day despite the sluggish start. 

Fauci on Thursday said Biden’s plan to speed up COVID-19 inoculations, including setting up community vaccination centers and involving more local pharmacies, improves on the Trump administration’s rollout. 

He added that Biden is deploying the Defense Production Act to help vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer Inc, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna Inc, scale their production. 

Most Americans will likely be vaccinated by the middle of this year, Fauci said, though he added he remains concerned about the amount of people who are hesitant to get a vaccine. 

Biden said urgent action was needed to help the millions of Americans suffering as part of the economic fallout from the pandemic. 

The government needs to act ‘decisively and boldly’ to help Americans who are seeing their paychecks reduced and are ‘barely hanging on,’ the president said. 

‘Sometimes the anxiety about what’s going to happen next is more consequential than what actually happened, but this is happening today in America, and this cannot be who we are as a country. These are not the values of our nation. We cannot, will not let people go hungry,’ he said.

Biden kicked off his presidency with a series of orders aimed at undoing much of President Donald Trump’s legacy and helping those devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.  

On Friday he signed executive orders aimed at speeding up delivery of stimulus checks to families who haven’t received them and increasing food aid for children who normally rely on school meals as a main source of food. 

He also directed his administration to start the work that would allow him to issue an executive order to require federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage to their employees. The federal minimum wage has been at $7.25 an hour since 2009.

The pandemic has hit the American economy hard.

More than 10 million Americans are unemployed, 14 million renters are behind on payments, and 29 million adults – and at least 8 million children – are struggling with food insecurity. 

Women, minorities and low-income service workers have been disproportionately impacted. Black and Hispanic workers face higher jobless rates than white workers.

‘We are at a precarious moment for the virus and the economy. 

Without decisive action, we risk falling into a very serious economic hole,’ Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council, said at Friday’s White House press briefing.

‘We are facing right now a period of multiple crises. And what we’re going to need is to be able to act on multiple fronts,’ he said.  

In one order, Biden directed the Treasury Department to find new ways to get stimulus checks, including $600 checks passed in December and $1,200 checks passed in March, to as many as eight million Americans who have not yet received them. 

He also issued an order to direct the Department of Agriculture to help families with schoolchildren buy groceries by increasing the weekly value of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, commonly known as food stamps, for about 12 million families.

It could provide a family with three children more than $100 of additional support every two months, the White House estimated.

‘USDA will consider issuing new guidance that would allow states to increase SNAP emergency allotments for those who need it most. This would be the first step to ensuring that an additional 12 million people get enhanced SNAP benefits to keep nutritious food on the table,’ a fact sheet distributed by the administration said. 

Biden will also seek to allow workers to draw unemployment benefits if they quit jobs they fear are unsafe amid the pandemic by noting ‘that workers have a federally guaranteed right to refuse employment that will jeopardize their health, and if they do so, they will still qualify for unemployment insurance,’ the White House fact sheet said.

His orders overturned many of President Trump’s directives on issues pertaining to federal workers. The order also eliminates Schedule F, a class of worker that Trump had established that stripped federal workers of many job protections.

Biden has made fighting COVID his top priority as president – above Biden volunteered with grand daughter Finnegan and daughter Ashley at Philabundance, Philadelphia’s largest hunger relief organization, before he was inaugurated

Biden is also seeking to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour for contract employees such as those who do custodial work – above workers clean the White House briefing room

President Biden has made fighting the COVID pandemic his top priority while in office.

‘To a nation waiting for action, let me be clear on this point: Help is on the way,’ he said Thursday when he signed 10 executive orders related to the COVID pandemic.

He has signed more than two dozen orders related to the pandemic, addressing climate change and reversing Trump policies such as the so-called Muslim ban on travelers from certain countries and stopping the building of the border wall.

In addition to the executive orders, Biden is also pushing a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package that includes $1,400 stimulus payments, raising the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, extended jobless benefits, aid for state and local governments and money for a nationwide vaccination program.

Republicans said the package is too expensive. 

Biden’s executive orders are designed to help ease people’s burdens while Congress works on the president’s legislative agenda. 

‘While I work with both parties and members of Congress there are steps we can and must stake right now,’ he said Friday.

‘We’re in a national emergency. We need to act like we’re in a national emergency, so I’ve got to move with everything we’ve got, and we’ve got to do it together,’ he said. 

Biden is expected to sign more executive orders in the coming days. 

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