BOSTON — As he begins his tran­si­tion to the pres­i­den­cy, Joe Biden is piv­ot­ing from a bit­ter cam­paign bat­tle to anoth­er, more press­ing fight: rein­ing in the pan­dem­ic that has hit the world’s most pow­er­ful nation hard­er than any other.

On Mon­day, Biden announced the mem­bers of his coro­n­avirus task force that will devel­op a blue­print for fight­ing the pan­dem­ic. It includes doc­tors and sci­en­tists who have served in pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions, many of them experts in pub­lic health, vac­cines and infec­tious diseases.

Notable among the mem­bers is Rick Bright, a vac­cine expert and for­mer head of the Bio­med­ical Advanced Research and Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty. He had filed a whistle­blow­er com­plaint alleg­ing he was reas­signed to a less­er job because he resist­ed polit­i­cal pres­sure to allow wide­spread use of hydrox­y­chloro­quine, a malar­ia drug pushed by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump as a COVID-19 treatment.

Pub­lic health offi­cials warn that the nation is enter­ing the worst stretch yet for COVID-19 as win­ter sets in and the hol­i­day sea­son approach­es, increas­ing the risk of rapid trans­mis­sion as Amer­i­cans trav­el, shop and cel­e­brate with loved ones.

“The next two months are going to be rough, dif­fi­cult ones,” said Dr. Albert Ko, an infec­tious dis­ease spe­cial­ist and depart­ment chair­man at the Yale School of Pub­lic Health. “We could see anoth­er 100,000 deaths by January.”

The U.S. is now aver­ag­ing more than 100,000 new coro­n­avirus infec­tions a day, fre­quent­ly break­ing records for dai­ly cas­es. Hos­pi­tals in sev­er­al states are run­ning out of space and staff, and the death toll is soar­ing. So far, the U.S. has record­ed more than 9.8 mil­lion infec­tions and more than 237,000 deaths from COVID-19.

“Deal­ing with the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic is one of the most impor­tant bat­tles our admin­is­tra­tion will face, and I will be informed by sci­ence and by experts,” Biden said in a state­ment Monday.

He pledged dur­ing the cam­paign to make test­ing free and wide­ly avail­able; to hire thou­sands of health work­ers to help imple­ment con­tact-trac­ing pro­grams; and to instruct the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion to pro­vide clear, expert-informed guide­lines, among oth­er proposals.

As the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee, Biden made Trump’s mis­han­dling of the pan­dem­ic a cen­tral focus of his cam­paign. But much of what Biden has pro­posed will take con­gres­sion­al action, and he’s cer­tain to face chal­lenges in a close­ly divid­ed House and Senate.

“I’m not run­ning on the false promis­es of being able to end this pan­dem­ic by flip­ping a switch. But I do promise this: We will start on day one doing the right things,” he said dur­ing a cam­paign event last month.

Dr. Phillip Coule, chief med­ical offi­cer at Augus­ta Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter in Geor­gia, said he hopes the nation can get past the polit­i­cal divi­sions that have com­pli­cat­ed the response to the virus now that the elec­tion is over.

“Now that we are post elec­tion, let’s just han­dle this based on the sci­ence and not the pol­i­tics of this dis­ease and the pan­dem­ic,” he said.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuo­mo, a Demo­c­rat, said he believes even the most ardent COVID-19 deniers will strike a more con­cil­ia­to­ry tone as Trump’s elec­tion defeat sinks in.

“I think the polit­i­cal pres­sure of deny­ing COVID is gone,” he said Sun­day on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think you’ll see sci­en­tists speak with an unmuz­zled voice now. And I think the num­bers are going to go up, and Amer­i­cans are going to get how seri­ous this is.”

The pres­i­dent-elect is lim­it­ed in what he can legal­ly do before he’s sworn in, but he and his tran­si­tion team should begin lay­ing the ground­work imme­di­ate­ly, said Dr. Leana Wen, a pub­lic health pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty and for­mer health com­mis­sion­er for Baltimore.

Estab­lish­ing some con­sen­sus with state lead­ers on a nation­al response, includ­ing a nation­wide mask man­date, should be a top pri­or­i­ty, she said. Oppo­si­tion to wear­ing masks remains a stub­born issue, par­tic­u­lar­ly in some of the hard­est-hit states.

“Each state is act­ing fair­ly autonomous­ly on their own poli­cies, and we’ve seen how that’s played out,” said Ko, the Yale expert. “This dis­ease needs nation­al and glob­al responses.”

Over­com­ing months of mixed mes­sag­ing on the pan­dem­ic is anoth­er uphill climb that Biden must start address­ing dur­ing his tran­si­tion, said Angela Ras­mussen, a virus researcher at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in New York.

“The past year of mis­in­for­ma­tion, con­fu­sion and gaslight­ing from the White House has real­ly left peo­ple with­out any trust that our gov­ern­ment is capa­ble of han­dling this,” she said. “It’s going to be crit­i­cal to begin com­mu­ni­cat­ing that, yes, this admin­is­tra­tion will be led by the science.”

Dur­ing his first remarks as pres­i­dent-elect, Biden said Sat­ur­day that his COVID-19 task force will cre­ate a plan “built on bedrock sci­ence” and “con­struct­ed out of com­pas­sion, empa­thy and concern.”

His sur­ro­gates, mean­while, have spent the days since the elec­tion assur­ing the pub­lic the admin­is­tra­tion will be ready to respond to the pandemic.

“I think there’s a sense of urgency through­out,” Pete Buttigieg, a for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial hope­ful who is now on Biden’s tran­si­tion team, said on Fox News Channel’s “Fox News Sun­day.” “We know that every day is bring­ing more loss, more pain and more dan­ger to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, and it’s why he’s not wait­ing until he’s tak­ing office to begin imme­di­ate­ly assem­bling peo­ple who have the right kind of exper­tise and plan­ning to actu­al­ly lis­ten to them.”

There’s also hope in the wider med­ical com­mu­ni­ty that a Biden pres­i­den­cy will help restore U.S. lead­er­ship on glob­al pub­lic health chal­lenges, includ­ing the devel­op­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion of a vac­cine when it becomes available.

Dr. Soumya Swami­nathan, the chief sci­en­tist of the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, said she was more opti­mistic that a Biden admin­is­tra­tion would join Cov­ax, a WHO-led project aimed to help deploy vac­cines to the need­i­est peo­ple world­wide, whether they live in rich or poor countries.

“Every­one rec­og­nizes that for a pan­dem­ic, you can­not have a coun­try-by-coun­try approach. You need a glob­al approach,” Swami­nathan said.

But in Kansas, one of the states see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant surge in virus cas­es in recent weeks, at least one hos­pi­tal offi­cial remains skep­ti­cal about what a new pres­i­dent can do to turn the tide of the pan­dem­ic in the U.S.

“I think the dam­age is done,” said Kris Math­ews, the admin­is­tra­tor of Decatur Health, a small hos­pi­tal in the rur­al north­west part of the state. “Peo­ple have made up their minds about how they react to it.”

Join our Face­book group for the lat­est updates on coro­n­avirus in Colorado.