Vice President Kamala Harris will make the case before United Nations members that now is the time for global leaders to begin putting the serious work into how they will respond to the next global pandemic.
The virtual address on Monday, Ms Harris' second to a UN body since her inauguration, will come as the United States makes progress on vaccinating the public and much of the world struggles to acquire vaccines.
"At the same time that the world works to get through this pandemic, we also know that we must prepare for the next," Ms Harris will say, according to excerpts of the speech.
The speech will be co-hosted by UN permanent representatives of Argentina, Japan, Norway and South Africa.
The Biden administration will mark its first 100 days in office this week.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to address Congress on Wednesday and is certain to highlight the headway his administration has made in responding to the worst public health crisis in the US in more than a century.
Ms Harris, according to the excerpts, will broadly outline how the administration thinks the US and other nations should consider focusing their attention.
The steps include improving accessibility to health systems, investing in science, health workers and the well-being of women, and surging capacity for personal protective equipment and vaccine and test manufacturing.
Ms Harris says much has been learned over the last year about pandemic preparedness and response but that it would be unwise to rest easy
"We have been reminded that the status quo is not nearly good enough, and that innovation is indeed the path forward," Ms Harris says.
Mr Biden's ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is also scheduled to deliver remarks at Monday's virtual event.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here