Biden’s Potential COVID-19 ‘Czar’ Zients Would Oversee Daunting Task of Pandemic Response

When technical problems marred the ballyhooed launch of the Affordable Care Act’s website, President Barack Obama turned to Jeff Zients, an economic adviser touted for his managerial skills, to repair Obama’s signature policy rollout.

Seven years later, Obama’s vice president, President-elect 👤Joe Biden, is considering tapping Zients to tackle a far more daunting problem as the incoming administration’s coronavirus “czar,” according to a Biden ally briefed on his thinking.

The prominent position would be similar to the role that Ron Klain, Biden’s soon-to-be chief of staff, played for the Obama administration during the Ebola crisis in 2014. While that outbreak ultimately killed only two people in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has already cost more than 270,000 U.S. lives and shows little sign of slowing amid record hospitalizations.

Zients appears to be the front-runner for the job, which could be announced as soon as next week, the Biden ally said. Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. surgeon general who has been one of Biden’s top coronavirus advisers, is also thought to be in the running.

Biden’s transition team declined to comment or make Zients available for an interview.

Biden has made fighting the intensifying pandemic his top priority, after a campaign in which he regularly slammed President Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis. Trump’s administration has a coronavirus task force led by Vice President Mike Pence and set up Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership, to speed vaccine development.

In addition to confronting the disease’s spread after Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, the coronavirus czar will oversee a mammoth and unprecedented operation to distribute hundreds of millions of doses of a new vaccine, coordinating efforts across multiple federal agencies.

The U.S. rollout of the first vaccines may begin this month, but it could be months before they are widely available.