Live updates: At first Cabinet meeting, Biden gives five secretaries a ‘special responsibility’ on jobs plan

Harris and Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy on Thursday morning kicked off the first virtual meeting of the Covid-19 Community Corps, a new grass-roots network that the Biden administration said would amplify public health information and pro-vaccine messages.

“You are the people that folks on the ground know and rely on and have a history with,” Harris told the network, which includes more than 275 advocacy organizations, sports leagues, faith groups and community leaders. “And when people are then making a decision to get vaccinated, they’re going to look to you.”

Harris also shared personal stories of how she believed the new network could be helpful.

“Yesterday, I actually convened a group of faith leaders from around the country, and they were very clear. They said, ‘look, sometimes people just need basic information, you know?’ ” Harris said. “ ‘You’re asking people to take a shot in the arm, they need to know what’s going on. They need to know things like, what’s in the vaccine? How does it work?’ ”

Officials from the Black Coalition Against COVID-19, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Farm Bureau Federation, Service Employees International Union and other groups participating in the network touted how they’ve been reaching out to their members and vowed to ramp up their efforts.

One speaker, Hyepin Im, president of California-based advocacy organization Faith and Community Empowerment, pushed Harris to better include Asian Americans and faith groups in the administration’s efforts to respond to the coronavirus.

“We’re not being talked about on the news, on the talking points, on the PowerPoints, so I would like to really just advocate the inclusion of Asian Americans … as well as, of course the faith organizations, again another group that oftentimes get left out in the public discourse,” she said.

Harris responded by highlighting the administration’s ongoing efforts to blunt pandemic-related disparities, an effort announced after the election and led in part by Murthy. “It is very important to the president that we speak truth and address racial inequities across the board but on this topic in particular,” the vice president said, adding that the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on communities of color was “really unacceptable and tragic.”