‘The plane is in a nosedive,’ HHS secretary nominee Xavier Becerra says of COVID outbreak

The COVID-19 pandemic is out of control, President Biden’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services said Sunday, echoing the commander-in-chief’s recent prediction about the months ahead.

“The plane is in a nosedive, and we’ve got to pull it up and you’re not going to do that overnight,” Becerra said on CNN. “We have to pull it up. Failure is not an option.”

He’d been asked about Biden’s Friday remark that there is nothing that can be done to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the coming months.

Becerra touted the president’s plans to “rescue the people, rescue the economy,” apparently alluding to Biden’s goal to get 100 million Americans vaccinated during his first 100 days, as well as a nearly $2 trillion economic relief package that’s in the works.

“It won’t happen overnight. We can do better. We can not only control COVID, but get us back to real normality,” said Becerra, who recently stepped down as California’s attorney general.

“We’ve got to make sure we’re coordinating,” the Democrat continued. “We can’t just tell the states, ‘Here’s some PPE, some masks, here’s some vaccines — now go do it.’ When we hand them over, we stay with them and provide resources to make it happen.”

He added that if the government can get people to follow Biden’s order to wear masks on federal property and during interstate travel, “we’re going to get control of this thing.”

The comments came as COVID-19 infection rates appear to have gone down since the holidays, though the death toll continues to climb, with more than 417,000 Americans dead as of Sunday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University.