II. Cloze Test
Instructions: Supply the missing word or string of words in the body of the essay. Make sure
that they make sense, are grammatically correct, relevant, and conform to proper collocation.
Opinion
The Next President Actually Has a Covid PlanAmerica desperately needs a leader who takes the pandemic seriously.
By The Editorial Boardㆍ Jan. 16,2021
It has been almost a year since the coronavirus first emerged in the United States, and it's still
spreading uncontrolled through much of the country. Several mutant variants have emerged ㅡ
some of them with alarming new properties - and the vaccination campaign
(1) is faltering badly.
It's hopeful, then, that the country is just days away from leadership that takes these problems
seriously. President-elect Joe Biden has announced plans to revamp the nation's flagging
coronavirus response. The scope and tenor of his vision seem commensurate with the task at hand.
Mr. Biden says he will ask Congress for $415 billion ㅡ to scale up testing, vaccination and
genomic surveillance, to increase domestic manufacturing, and to create a national corps of public
health workers.
But to prevail, the new administration will have to win numerous political battles and
(2) It has been nearly 1 I months since the coronavirus was first detected in the United States, and it
continues to spread relentlessly, sickening and killing as officials dither and debate, and repeat
obvious mistakes. In spring and summer, the problem was testing and personal protective
equipment; this fall and winter, it has been vaccination and genomic surveillance. Time and again,
the federal government has foisted responsibility for unwieldy initiatives onto individual states without
(3) . Time and again, the states have fumbled and faltered. Time and again, the virus has
surged.
More than 23 million Americans have been infected, and nearly 400,000 have died. With each
passing month, the bizarre features of pandemic life --the Zoom funerals, the end of regular
haircuts and restaurant dining, the sports arenas filled with cardboard spcctators -- have become
that much more familiar. It's tempting to succumb to indifference after so much suffering and loss.
The nation
(4) , and none of them have shaken leaders from their complacency or nudged the
country onto a different course.
But the change in administration is an opportunity to finally hecd the lessons of this pandemic and
get it under control before things get even worse.
Stop the spreadCovid-19 is most likely now the leading cause of death in the United States. It's tempting to think
that
(5) - the face masks, physical distancing, closures and travel restrictions ㅡ don't work.
Because if they did, we wouldn't be in such a state, right?
Wrong. All of these measures work when they are used consistently and correctly, and all of them
have a role to play in fighting the virus. The incoming administration will have to drive this point
home as forcefully as possible.
The bigger the crisis gets and the longer it drags on,
(6) that something as simple as a face mask or
as nontechnical as a quarantine can save lives. But these measures can be incredibly effective if
everyone sticks with them. The incoming president will have a rare opportunity to make that
message new again.
Map the mutantsSeveral mutant variants of the coronavirus have popped up around the globe in recent months, cach
seemingly more worrisome than the last. The country needs to do a much better and faster job of
tracking these variants and of
(7) that are sure to emerge in the months ahead.
That means more clinical tests designed to rapidly identify such mutations in patients who turn up
with symptoms, and larger-scale genomic surveillance efforts that can track them at the community
level. States that are not already using wastewater surveillance should start doing so now: Studies
show it's a fast and cost-effective way to monitor the virus's spread, and if wastewater surveillance
is paired with sequencing, it can help ferret out dangerous variants much more efficiently than
clinical testing does.
That information can then be used to guide the nation's flagging contact tracing efforts.
Many states have all but abandoned their contact tracing programs because the virus has spread far
beyond their ability to track it. But if contact tracers can't do much against the regular coronavirus,
they can still have a huge impact on its mutant siblings. If every case of B1 17-which is the most
alarming variant that we know of so far, because it spreads much faster than any othersㅡ-were
immediately assigned to a team of contact tracers, and if everything possible were then done to test,
isolate and quarantine those contacts as needed, this more contagious strain could be held at bay
long cnough for vaccination to work its magic.
State and city health officials should make this an immediate priority-every bit as much as
vaccination--and stomp out these mutant variants before it's too late.
Vaccinate quickly
(8) . Only about one-third of the 30 million or so shots provided to states have been injected into
arms. The rest have been held up by a roster of factors, including vaccine hesitancy, cumbersome
federal prioritization guidelines, and poor coordination between major pharmacies and the
thousa ands of nursing homes whose stalf' and residents they are supposed to inoculate.
This week, in an attempt to speed things up, the outgoing administration abandoned its own
prioritization guidelines, and deemed some 152 million more people immediately eligible for
vaccination. Officials also indicated that (9) , rather than holding them in reserve as was originally
planned. But those pronouncements have only made matters worse. Health departments have been
overrun, web portals and phone lines have crashed, and consumers scrambling to secure
appointments have been outraged to find that the vaccine is still not widely available. As The
Washington Post has since reported, there are no reserve doses to be had.
To get more people vaccinated, states need trained vaccinators. They also need the technical
capacity to schedule appointments for hundreds of thousands of people and public messaging
campaigns to combat hesitancy. Officials need to inform people of where they stand in line and tell
them when and how they should sign up to be inoculated.
President-elect Biden has vowed to get those measures in place quickly, and to vaccinate 100
million people in his first 100 days. That's a worthy goal. But to succeed, he'll have to do a much
better job than his predecessor of communicating with and supporting states. The mass vaccination
sites the Biden administration plans to establish will work great in some places, but support for
community clinics will be the wiser course in others, and pharmacies will have a much bigger role
to play in yet others.
The incoming president can help keep the overall effort on track by adhering to a clear national
vaccination strategy: Is the goal to save as many lives as possible or to reopen businesses? Is the
goal to vaccinate as quickly as possible or to ensure that precious shots are equitably distributed?
Congress (10) by approving and releasing the necessary funds as quickly as possible.
END
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/opinion/coronavirus-biden-vaccinc-covid.html
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