Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is joining an expert planning group aimed at laying the groundwork for discovering and preserving lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Covid Commission Planning Group (Covid CPG) includes more than two dozen of the nation’s top virologists, public health experts, clinicians, and former government officials. Based at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs and sponsored by several of America’s leading charitable foundations, the group is being led by Philip Zelikow, who was executive director of the 9/11 Commission and, before that, the Carter-Ford Commission on Federal Election Reform.
The Covid CPG will investigate a range of topics, including the disease’s origins, national and state readiness and response, communities at risk, and diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. The group’s aim is to pave the way for a National Covid Commission—which might be organized by the White House or Congress, or established privately—to help America begin to heal and to safeguard the country from future existential threats, according to an April 13, 2021, article from the Miller Center.
Since early 2020, Lipsitch and his colleagues have produced key studies modeling the COVID-19 pandemic, and Lipsitch has been widely quoted in the media.
Read the Miller Center article: Covid Commission Planning Group