President-elect Joe Biden speaks at a “Get Ready to Vote” rally with Georgia Democratic Senate nominees Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff on Dec. 15 in Atlanta. His audience was seated in cars. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)

 

 

President-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, plan to begin their course of coronavirus vaccinations Monday, after the recent infection of two people in his orbit, including a senior adviser, brought the pandemic closer than before to the former vice president and senior members of his team.

The Biden team also is rethinking how to organize the president-elect’s West Wing staff, which will take office amid what is expected to be a bleak and dangerous winter because of the pandemic. The new administration does not plan to have its full staff work out of the typically cramped White House offices immediately after taking office Jan. 20 because of medical concerns, officials said Friday.

The outgoing Trump administration, which has demonstrated far less adherence to its own medical team’s coronavirus guidance than Biden’s team, has suffered through several outbreaks of the virus, with victims including Trump, his wife and son, and many senior officials and Cabinet members.

The announcement of the Bidens’ pending inoculation and curbs on attendance at the White House after his inauguration illustrate the extraordinary difficulty that the pandemic has added to planning for a transfer of power and launching a new government, layering significantly more complication and risk to an already fraught process.

During the transition, many of Biden’s meetings have been conducted virtually, with only a few staff members, stationed in his hometown of Wilmington, Del., who regularly see the president-elect in person.

That followed the pattern set in the campaign, during which Biden spent long stretches hunkered down in his Wilmington home to protect against catching the virus as it rampaged across the country. Trump, who was diagnosed with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in October, regularly mocked Biden for his preventive behavior and, when he emerged, for routinely wearing a mask. Neither the president nor his senior aides regularly wear masks or demonstrate social distancing practices.

In deciding when to receive the two-shot regimen required for the coronavirus vaccine, Biden has had to weigh his own health risks against the politically tricky image of skipping ahead of some health-care workers to receive an inoculation.

Biden, who at 78 will be the oldest president ever inaugurated, is in a high-risk category because of his age. His incoming medical adviser, Anthony S. Fauci, had recommended that he and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris receive vaccinations, along with President Trump and Vice President Pence. Pence and his wife, Karen, received their shots Friday in a televised event.

Biden has set a goal of distributing 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office. He also wants Americans to wear masks during this period as a way to reduce community spread of the virus.

Biden’s brief trip to Georgia on Tuesday — the only time he has boarded an airplane since winning the election — clearly illustrated the risks he’s facing in delaying the shots: Within days of the stop at least two people involved in the visit tested positive for the coronavirus.

One was an unnamed reporter who covered the trip but did not fly on the same plane as Biden, nor come into close contact with the president-elect. Biden did, however, approach the traveling press corps before taking off from Wilmington for Atlanta. Biden and the reporters wore masks as they spoke.

The second was Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.), who will become a senior adviser to Biden in the White House. Biden’s transition team, in a statement released Thursday, said the president-elect was never in “close contact” with Richmond as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Given the circumstances, Biden did not plan to self-quarantine.

Richmond’s office referred questions to the Biden transition team. Biden’s team declined to provide any additional details Friday about their contact, its duration or whether it occurred indoors or outside.

Biden traveled to Georgia to campaign for two U.S. Senate candidates vying against Republican incumbents in Jan. 5 runoff elections. The outcome of the race will determine control of the Senate, in which Republicans currently hold a 50-to-48 advantage. Two Democratic wins would flip control, as Harris would become the tiebreaker once she is sworn into office.

Biden spoke briefly at an outdoor car rally in Atlanta and did not appear on that stage with Richmond. Richmond traveled to the event separately from Biden.

“We have covid protocols in place that everybody abides by who has any contact or attends any events with the president-elect,” Jen Psaki, a Biden-Harris transition spokeswoman, said during a Friday news briefing.

Biden regularly takes coronavirus tests. His latest results, from a test taken Thursday, were negative.

Psaki said that Richmond’s status did not change the timing of Biden’s vaccination.

But the plans had appeared to have been in flux. CNN reported Wednesday that Biden would receive his vaccination early next week, although Biden’s team told The Washington Post only that it would be “as soon as next week” and would not commit to a specific timeline.

Psaki declined to immediately say when Richmond last had a negative coronavirus test. Richmond’s office also did not respond to multiple requests to explain when he last tested negative.

The reporter who tested positive covered Biden on Monday and Tuesday. Reporters who cover Biden at specific events must show they have tested negative at a transition testing site before they are permitted near him. They also are required to wear masks.

Biden also wears masks to his events, and sometimes has given entire speeches wearing one. But he occasionally pulls his mask down when people have difficulty understanding him. After stepping off the outdoor stage in Atlanta on Tuesday, Biden briefly pulled down his mask to yell something to a supporter and then put it back in place.

Biden’s vaccination will be done in public in Delaware, but his aides declined to provide details about exactly when or where the shots would be given. Biden and his wife will receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Psaki said.

Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, will start their course of vaccinations after Christmas, Psaki said. Biden and Harris have separate medical teams and Psaki said the quartet was spacing out the inoculations based on advice from their doctors.

Pence and his wife also received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It was administered by Walter Reed National Military Medical Center staff in a room in the White House complex Friday.

The pandemic has cast a pall over one of the typical moves for any incoming administration: jockeying for valuable West Wing real estate. In the past two administrations, the crowded conditions have led aides at times to share desks.

“We expect that everybody who would traditionally be — and historically be — working out of the West Wing, probably will not be working out of the West Wing on January 20th and January 21st,” Psaki said.

The new administration will “abide by the guidance and direction by our medical experts and doctors” in determining who will be in the building and when, she said.

Biden plans to announce his selection for additional administration posts next week, but Psaki declined to say whether all of the Cabinet slots will be announced by Christmas, which the Biden team had hoped to do.

“It’s all based on when decision-making is made and we want to give him the time and space to do that,” Psaki said. She said that Biden’s team does expect to name the first 100 appointments by the new year.

So far Biden has named 19 members of his Cabinet, but some big slots remain open,including who will lead the departments of Justice, Labor and Education and who will lead the CIA.

On Saturday, he is due to publicly announce members of his climate and energy teams, including his nominee for interior secretary, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), who if confirmed by the Senate would be the first Native American to serve in the Cabinet.

In addition to Haaland, Biden will introduce North Carolina environmental regulator Michael S. Regan, who would be the first Black man to head the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as Obama administration veteran Brenda Mallory to serve as the first Black chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm will be named by Biden as his nominee for energy secretary.

 

Matt Viser contributed to this report.