WASHINGTON >> President-elect Joe Biden is ruling out the possibility of a national lockdown to address the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking to reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, today, Biden said there will be “no national shutdown” when he’s in office because “every region, every area, every community can be different” and a blanket lockdown would be “counterproductive.”

Biden has faced questions about whether he’d pursue a nationwide shutdown to try to rein in the virus after one of the members of his coronavirus task force floated the possibility in an interview. But Biden and other members of the task force have said the proposal is not on the table and is not the best option to address the pandemic.

Biden did say that there may be “constraints” in the “degree to which business can be open,” suggesting federal and state officials would be “calibrating” what can remain open based on the local trends in the pandemic.

Biden also decided today whom to nominate as his secretary of the Treasury Department. Biden said the decision will be announced just before or after Thanksgiving and that “you’ll find it is someone who I think will be accepted by all elements of the Democratic Party, progressives through the moderate coalition.”

Biden’s treasury secretary would lead his economic team as many businesses and Americans struggle while the coronavirus pandemic continues.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s refusal to give Biden’s team access to key federal agencies is affecting their ability to create a plan to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, particularly around vaccine distribution.

Biden referenced the refusal by the General Services Administration to name him the apparent winner of the election. The refusal has blocked Biden’s team from receiving federal funds allocated for the transition and barred his team from meeting with their counterparts to collect relevant information.

Biden says that his transition team doesn’t have “all the information that we need to get from all the various agencies,” and that, as a result, “we’re not able to deal with everything from testing to guidance to the all-important issue of vaccine distribution.”

Biden has launched his own working group focused on crafting an actionable plan to rein in the pandemic. But he and his aides have said a lack of access to the current planning in the federal government will make the response much more difficult when Biden does take office in January.