Ramp up the pace of manufacturing and testing.
One order calls on agency leaders to check for shortages in areas like personal protective gear and vaccine supplies, and identify where the administration could invoke the Defense Production Act to increase manufacturing. The White House has said it could use the Korean War-era law, which the Trump administration made use of in its vaccine development program, to increase production of a type of syringe that allows pharmacists to extract an extra dose from vaccine vials.
The Biden team has said it identified 12 “immediate supply shortfalls” critical to the pandemic response, including N95 surgical masks and isolation gowns, as well as swabs, reagents and pipettes used in testing.
Require mask wearing during interstate travel.
Mr. Biden has vowed to use his powers as president to influence mask wearing wherever he is legally allowed to, including on federal property and in travel that crosses state lines. An order issued Thursday requires mask wearing in airports and on many airplanes, intercity buses and trains.
The same order also requires international travelers to prove they have a recent negative coronavirus test before heading to the United States and to comply with quarantining guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention once they land.
Form better data collection systems.
One order calls on the health and human services secretary and the White House’s Covid-19 response coordinator to re-evaluate the federal government’s Covid-19 data-gathering systems and issue a report on their findings. It also calls on the heads of “all executive departments and agencies” to gather and share coronavirus-related data.
The Trump administration struggled last year to settle on a centralized system, pitting competing programs at the Department of Health and Human Services and the C.D.C. against one another. Alex M. Azar II, the former health and human services secretary, ordered hospitals to send daily reports about virus cases to a private vendor that transmitted them to a central database in Washington, instead of the C.D.C., which had previously housed the data. The decision, which remains in effect, angered C.D.C. scientists.