by Martina Fuchs
GENEVA, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- A mixture of political reasons and a lack of organization is to blame for the high number of COVID-19 cases and fatalities in the United States, a public health expert has said.
With a federal system, the United States has witnessed "about 50 different types of approaches to the problem," while the administration "has been fighting an election," said Therese Hesketh, a professor on global health at the University College London and director of the Center for Global Health at Zhejiang University.
The bad situation in the United States can be attributed to "the combination of the lack of organization between the states and non agreements on how the pandemic can be controlled, along with a president who has been fighting for his political life, and a president of course who hasn't taken it seriously," Hesketh said.
"We from the UK look at America and say 'someone is doing it worse than we are'," she added.
The United States remains the nation worst hit by the pandemic, with over 24,230,000 cases and more than 401,000 deaths, accounting for more than 25 percent of the global cases and nearly 20 percent of the global deaths, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Hesketh hoped that the incoming Biden administration could help turn the corner in combating the pandemic.
"We know that Joe Biden has said that controlling COVID-19 is absolutely on top of his agenda. It's really an organizational problem," Hesketh said.
President-elect Joe Biden, who is to be sworn in on Wednesday, has promised to make the fight against COVID-19 a top priority.
In his first 100 days in office, Biden plans to distribute 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine -- enough to cover 50 million people -- and unleash a 1.9-trillion-U.S.-dollar relief bill, which includes another round of direct payments to individuals, aid for state and local governments, increased unemployment benefits, and more funding for testing and vaccine distribution.
However, Hesketh warned that anti-vaccine activists and advocacy groups in the United States could further harm the country's response to the pandemic. Enditem
