Biden Covid workforce holds a press convention as every day U.S. circumstances regularly ease off

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President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 Response Team plans to hold a press conference on Friday at which officials will announce a new partnership with top corporate groups to help with the national pandemic response, a senior administrative official told CNBC.

The aim of the partnership is to encourage businesses of all sizes to “promote public health actions to remove barriers to vaccination for employees and improve public health reporting on masking and vaccination for their customers and communities”, the official told CNBC. The New York Times previously reported on the partnership

The press conference is taking place as the US reports a slight plateau in nationwide Covid-19 cases. According to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the nation currently reports a weekly average of around 73,376 new cases per day, a slight increase compared to a week ago. The US hit a high of nearly 250,000 cases per day in early January after the winter break.

Biden’s top health officials warn that new, highly communicable variants of the coronavirus, particularly strain B.1.1.7 first identified in the UK, could delay the nation’s control of the pandemic.

– CNBC’s Will Feuer contributed to this report.

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