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White House new Covid coordinator is Bihar-born Ashish Jha. What you should know
Dr Jha will replace Jeff Zients in April. Taking to Twitter, Dr Jha said that he was honoured to have the opportunity to serve as the White House’s Covid-19 Response Coordinator.
The White House's new Covid coordinator is an Indian-American physician - Dr Ashish Jha - who replaces Jeff Zients in April. “I am excited to name Dr Ashish Jha as the new White House Covid Response Coordinator. Dr Jha is one of the leading public health experts in America and a well-known figure to many Americans from his wise and calming public presence,” US president Joe Biden said in a statement on Thursday.
Who is Dr Ashish Jha?
Fifty-one-year-old Dr Ashish Jha is a practising physician with deep expertise in infectious diseases. He was born in Bihar’s Pursaulia in 1970. His family migrated to Canada in 1979 and then to the United States in 1983.
According to his profile on the Brown School of Public Health's website, he "is recognized globally as an expert on pandemic preparedness and response as well as on health policy research and practice. He has led groundbreaking research around Ebola and is now on the frontlines of the Covid-19 response, leading national and international analysis of key issues and advising state and federal policy makers." After graduating from Columbia in 1992, he earned an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1997 and trained in internal medicine at the University of California in San Francisco, it says.
He completed his general medicine fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School and received his master of public health in 2004 from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Till now, Dr Jha had been serving as the dean of Brown University School of Public Health.
“Honoured to have the opportunity," says Dr Jha
Taking to Twitter, Dr Jha said that he was honoured to have the opportunity to serve as the White House’s Covid-19 Response Coordinator. “So, as they say...Some news. For all the progress we’ve made in this pandemic(and there is a lot). We still have important work to do to protect Americans’ lives and well-being. So, when @POTUS asked me to serve, I was honoured to have the opportunity,” Dr Jha tweeted.
His predecessor leaves with a record
Jeff Zients, his predecessor, leaves a stellar record. He was said to be the "right person at the right place at right time". "When Jeff took this job, less than 1% of Americans were fully vaccinated; fewer than half our schools were open; and unlike much of the developed world, America lacked any at-home Covid tests. Today, almost 80% of adults are fully vaccinated; over 100 million are boosted; virtually every school is open; and hundreds of millions of at-home tests are distributed every month. In addition, the US leads the global effort to fight Covid, delivering more free vaccines to other countries than every other nation on Earth," a statement by the White House reads.
Dr Jha's challenges
A surge in Covid cases globally is believed to be one of the challenges that Dr Jha may face in his tenue. Top US medical expert Anthony Fauci has warned that restrictions may have to be put in place if the country too witnesses a spike. The United States has the highest number of overall cases in the world.
(With agency inputs)
