‘I implore you to wear a mask’

US president-elect Joe Biden yesterday convened a task force to devise a blueprint for tackling the coronavirus crisis imploring Americans to wear protective masks, while President Donald Trump pursues several long-shot gambits to hold on to his job and fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. 

"We could save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months. Not Democratic or Republican lives. American lives," Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. "I implore you to wear a mask. Do it for yourself. Do it for your neighbor. A mask is not a political statement."

The pandemic has killed more than 237,000 Americans and thrown millions out of work. Biden spoke two days after clinching election victory over Trump.

Biden, set to take office on Jan 20, conferred by video with his 13-member task force, headed by former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler and Yale University healthcare equity expert Marcella Nunez-Smith.

Mask wearing has become a political issue in the United States, with Trump mocking Biden for wearing a mask during the campaign and many conservatives contending masks infringe upon their individual freedom.

Biden said his team will focus on making rapid Covid-19 testing widely available and building a corps of contact-tracers to track and curb the pathogen's spread and prioritise vulnerable populations. Biden said his administration would work to get an approved vaccine "distributed as quickly as possible to as many Americans as possible, free of charge."

Biden cleared the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency on Saturday, four days after the Nov 3 election.

Asked when Trump would concede or call Biden, Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller yesterday told Fox Business Network: "That word's not even in our vocabulary now. We're going to pursue all these legal means, all the recount methods."

Trump has been talking with his advisers about the possibility of running for president in 2024, a source familiar with the discussions said.

Yesterday, Trump announced on Twitter that he has fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and that Christopher Miller, who serves as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will become acting secretary "effective immediately."

Tensions between Esper and Trump played out publicly and had been simmering long enough that the defense secretary had prepared a letter of resignation weeks ago, aware that the president could fire him by tweet at any time.

One administration source told CNN that Trump had no respect for Esper, leaving the defense secretary with little influence and little choice but to take his lead from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday congratulated Biden on winning the US presidency -- and the American people for a "vibrant exercise of democracy."

"The Secretary-General congratulates the American people for a vibrant exercise of democracy in their country's elections last week," spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

Dujarric did not explain why Guterres waited two days to offer his congratulations to Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.