Biden campaign hits Trump for saying he would close pandemic preparedness office

President Biden’s reelection campaign criticized former President Trump on Tuesday after Trump said he would get rid of the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR).

The OPPR was founded in 2022 to address failures in government response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump said in a Time magazine interview Monday that the office isn’t necessary.

The office is “a way of giving out pork,” Trump said. “I think it sounds good politically, but I think it’s a very expensive solution to something that won’t work. You have to move quickly when you see it happening.”

Biden’s campaign blasted Trump for the idea, pointing to the former president’s response to the COVID pandemic outbreak in early 2020 as lackluster and without a clear plan.

“Pandemic preparedness isn’t abstract to the millions of Americans that lost a loved one because of Donald Trump’s failed response to COVID-19,” campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement to The Hill.

“We know the impact of Trump’s inability to lead all too well: an economy in shambles, schools closed down, and far too many American lives needlessly lost,” he continued. “We cannot afford to go back.”

Munoz also worked as a White House spokesperson on COVID-19 during the early months of the president’s term.

In 2018, Trump’s administration eliminated a pandemic preparedness task force similar to the OPPR. The National Security Council’s Global Health Security and Biodefense unit was disbanded during a reorganization of the council, with much of its staff leaving their posts or being absorbed into other units within the council.

Founded in 2015 after the Ebola outbreak, the unit was intended to create reaction plans and logistics preparation for any domestic health outbreak. Biden’s successor office, the OPPR, has already worked in response to a bird flu outbreak among American livestock this year.

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