President-elect Joe Biden appointed two Latino health and infectious disease experts as members of his COVID-19 Task Force, who will be responsible for helping mitigate the virus.

Latino health experts
(Photo : wikimedia commons)
Two Latino health and infectious disease experts were appointed as members of Biden's COVID-19 Task Force.

President-elect Joe Biden's first job as he enters the virus is to plan to mitigate COVID-19 that continues to devastate the country.

He has always said that all his actions against the virus will be based on science. Biden now appointed two Latino health and infectious disease experts to become members of his COVID-19 Task Force, reported by NBC News.

Biden named Dr. Robert Rodriguez and Dr. Luciana Borio as members of his virus task force. Dr. Rodriguez is an emergency room doctor in California who responded to the surge of COVID-19 in his native state, Texas.

Meanwhile, Dr. Borio is an expert in biodefense and emerging infectious diseases who warned in January about the coming of a COVID-19 crisis or the global pandemic. 

Read also: Puerto Rico to Provide Free COVID-19 Rapid Test at Toll Booths to Control Asymptomatic Spread

The two Latino health and infectious disease experts are expected to help the new administration to combat COVID-19.

The backgrounds that they have in the field of science are remarkable and they deserve to become part of Biden's COVID-19 Task Force. 

Dr. Rodriguez is a respected professor of emergency medicine at the University of California San Francisco. He became a very significant person in responding to COVID-19 in Texas.

On the other hand, Dr. Borio once served as a member of Trump's National Security Council and its pandemic response team until it was disbanded in 2018. At present, she is now the vice president of technical staff at In-Q-Tel

The creation of the COVID-19 Task Force is the first step that the Biden-Harris administration took as they will enter the White House. The duo has been touting before that the global pandemic should be addressed by using data coming from science and health experts. 

Read also: COVID-19: Analysis Shows Pfizer's Vaccine is 90% Effective in Phase 3 Trial 

Moreover, the Latino doctor Robert Rodriguez decided to return home and volunteered in his hometown in Brownsville, Texas. His mission is to help stop the surge of COVID-19 in Rio Grande Valley. He also helped two hospitals in dealing with the virus in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

During the online pane initiated by the League of United Latin American Citizens in mid-August, Dr. Rodriguez said that he had seen how the pandemic devastated the Latino community

It cannot be denied that the largest minority group in the country is disproportionately affected by the pandemic. 

Even though the number of COVID-19 infections in Sn Francisco remained steady but he also admitted that it was the hardest experience of his life, the hardest work he had as an emergency physician, and an intensive care physician.

Speaking to NBC News, Dr. Rodriguez said, "I flew down there, and the next day I was in the ICU treating the sickest patients that I had ever seen in my career. The doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists were working extremely hard, but they were simply overwhelmed with the number of cases."

Meanwhile, Dr. Borio is from Brazil and became known for being vocal about the spread of the virus in the U.S. In fact, she co-wrote an article in January this year in the news outlet The Wall Street Journal titled "Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic."

"First, the most important public-health tool for containment is the identification and isolation of cases to break the chain of spread," Dr. Borio claimed.

The opinion article urged the federal government for accessible COVID-19 testing, more protective equipment, and more infection control prevention.