The White House's top health officials have issued a clear warning to Congress about its failure to fund additional COVID-19 aid: “If adequate funding is provided, our country will be in a position of strength, well situated to manage COVID-19 and to adapt our response as future variants emerge,” Surgeon General
Vivek Murthy and Chief Science Officer
David Kessler of the White House COVID response team wrote in a
New York Times op-edTuesday.
“If the funding does not materialize, we will find ourselves in a far weaker position, struggling to keep up with a constantly evolving virus that will continue to threaten our health, our economy, and our peace of mind.”
The pandemic,
now two years in, has eased in the United States in recent weeks following the delta surge in fall and the omicron wave in winter, and the country has begun to usher in a sense of normalcy thanks to the vaccines that have provided most Americans strong protection against severe COVID outcomes.
But that progress could be jeopardized if Capitol Hill Republicans continue to block additional funding for prevention. The consequences of the delays are already being felt and could compound over time: The administration slashed its shipments of monoclonal antibodies to states by 35 percent and will run out by the end of the spring, Murthy and Kessler said.
The administration has also been unable to purchase enough boosters to cover all Americans, and will not be able to “secure,” “deliver,” or “administer” variant-specific shots should they be needed. "If that funding is not provided, then we risk backsliding,” they said. The U.S. Agency for International Development is also
running perilously low on funds, putting at risk the administration's ability to help vaccinate the rest of the globe. “Health disparities could worsen,” they cautioned.
"If that funding is not provided, then we risk backsliding,” they said, citing fears that the BA.2 variant — which appears more transmissible than omicron, but no more virulent — could soon drive a another rise in caseloads in the U.S.
Congressional Republicans are blocking additional investments into Covid-19 prevention demanding a “real accounting” of how previous dollars were spent. Already the government has run out money to buy enough booster shots, and is slowing distributions of antibody treatments.
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