United States President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday announced a $1.9 trillion (Rs 139 lakh crore) coronavirus relief package to tackle the economic fallout from the pandemic in the country, PTI reported. The package includes $415 billion (over Rs 30 lakh crore) focused on combating the pandemic, over $1 trillion (over Rs 73 lakh crore) in direct aid to individuals and families and $440 billion (over Rs 32 lakh crore) in assistance to businesses.

“During this pandemic, millions of Americans, through no fault of their own, have lost the dignity and respect that comes with a job and a paycheck,” Biden said in a speech on Thursday, according to the New York Times. “There is real pain overwhelming the real economy.”

He said that the scale of the relief package was needed for the country. “The very health of our nation is at stake,” Biden said. “[It] does not come cheaply, but failure to do so will cost us dearly.”

Later, in a tweet on Friday, Biden highlighted priorities of the package.

The package includes $1,400 (Rs 10,238) in additional stimulus cheques to Americans, an extension for key unemployment programmes from mid-March to the end of September and an increase in weekly additional unemployment assistance from $300 to $400 (Rs 22,000 to Rs 29,250) and increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 (Rs 1,097) an hour over time, according to PTI.

The proposal also sets aside $20 billion (Rs 1.46 lakh crore) for a national vaccination programme and $50 billion (Rs 3 lakh crore) to scale up coronavirus testing.

However, there are doubts about the passage of the proposal, as Biden’s Democratic Party has a wafer-thin majority in the Senate after Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote, the New York Times pointed out. In his speech, Biden asserted that the plan is the path forward “with a seriousness of purpose, a clear plan with transparency and accountability with a call for unity that is equally necessary”.

United States is the worst hit country due to coronavirus, with a total of over 2.33 crore cases and 3.88 lakh deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University and Medicine. The country’s Labor Department on Thursday said that 1.15 million Americans filed new unemployment claims in the first full week of the new year, a 25% increase from the previous week. The country shed 1,40,000 jobs in December, according to the New York Times.