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President Joe Biden‘s Covid-19 response team plans to hold a press briefing Friday where officials will announce a new partnership with top business groups to help with the national pandemic response, a senior administration official told CNBC.
The purpose of the partnership is to call on businesses of all sizes “to promote public health measures to help reduce barriers to vaccinations for employees, and to help amplify public health messaging around masking and vaccinations to their customers and communities,” the official told CNBC. The New York Times reported on the partnership earlier
The news conference comes as the U.S. reports a slight plateau in nationwide Covid-19 cases. The nation is now reporting a weekly average of roughly 73,376 new cases a day, a slight uptick compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. peaked at close to 250,000 cases per day in early January following the winter holidays.
Biden’s top health officials are warning that new, highly transmissible variants of the coronavirus, specifically the B.1.1.7 strain first identified in the U.K., could delay the nation’s control of the pandemic.
— CNBC’s Will Feuer contributed to this report.
Read CNBC’s live updates to see the latest news on the Covid-19 outbreak.
