Biden looks for $9B+ in new Covid funds as Senate passes resolution to end emergency declaration – Endpoints News

The lame duck ses­sion is here and the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion yes­ter­day asked Con­gress for $9.25 bil­lion in new Covid-19 fund­ing for vac­cines, treat­ments and tests even as Pres­i­dent Biden’s Covid-19 co­or­di­na­tor said ear­li­er this week that this win­ter like­ly won’t come with a big surge of new in­fec­tions.

Re­pub­li­cans have spurned three pre­vi­ous re­quests by this ad­min­is­tra­tion for emer­gency Covid funds. The new funds would help to cre­ate Op­er­a­tion Warp Speed 2.0, dubbed “Pro­ject Covid Shield,” that would help to de­vel­op next-gen vac­cines and treat­ments as three vari­ants — BA. 5, BQ.1.1 and B.Q.1 — make up more than 70% of US in­fec­tions, ac­cord­ing to the CDC. Biden is al­so call­ing for more funds for the glob­al Covid fight, in ad­di­tion to $750 mil­lion to fight HIV, he­pati­tis C and mon­key­pox.

Ashish Jha

And de­spite Ashish Jha’s com­ments at a STAT event sig­nal­ing an in­com­ing surge of cas­es is un­like­ly, the White House said yes­ter­day that it needs these ad­di­tion­al re­sources to en­sure ad­e­quate sup­plies and “to help pre­pare for a pos­si­ble win­ter surge,” as well as to “smooth the path to com­mer­cial­iza­tion for vac­cines and ther­a­peu­tics, ac­cel­er­ate re­search and treat­ment for long COVID, and de­vel­op next-gen­er­a­tion vac­cines and treat­ments.”

The first wave of BAR­DA and fed­er­al fund­ing un­der Warp Speed went to at least nine dif­fer­ent vac­cines and ther­a­peu­tics that lat­er be­came some of the biggest block­buster med­ical prod­ucts of all time.

The US still has am­ple sup­plies of a hand­ful of treat­ments, in­clud­ing Pfiz­er’s Covid pill Paxlovid, Gilead’s an­tivi­ral Vek­lury, as well as Mer­ck’s pill Lagevrio, As­traZeneca’s Evusheld and Eli Lil­ly’s bebtelovimab. AS­PR said ear­li­er this month that Paxlovid, Vek­lury and Lagevrio are ex­pect­ed to re­tain ac­tiv­i­ty cir­cu­lat­ing vari­ants, in­clud­ing BQ.1 and BQ.1.1.

Biden and De­moc­rats have un­til Dec. 16 to get the new funds passed, just as Re­pub­li­cans have re­it­er­at­ed their strong op­po­si­tion to new Covid-19 funds.

The Sen­ate yes­ter­day passed a joint res­o­lu­tion that Re­pub­li­cans put for­ward to ter­mi­nate the emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tion for Covid-19.

Sen. Roger Mar­shall (R-KS), who in­tro­duced the res­o­lu­tion, praised the pas­sage of it and called out Pres­i­dent Biden’s “60 Min­utes” in­ter­view com­ment that the pan­dem­ic was “over.”

“Yet de­spite all the ad­vances we’ve made in our fight against the virus and the vic­to­ri­ous de­c­la­ra­tion by our Chief Ex­ec­u­tive, this ad­min­is­tra­tion in­sists the na­tion­al emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tion re­main in place,” Mar­shall said.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion said it would ve­to the res­o­lu­tion, not­ing in a state­ment of pol­i­cy yes­ter­day:

The na­tion­al emer­gency en­ables the Ad­min­is­tra­tion to more ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to COVID-19, in­clud­ing en­sur­ing that nec­es­sary sup­plies are prompt­ly avail­able to re­spond to the virus and fa­cil­i­tat­ing the de­liv­ery of health care at a time when our health sys­tem has been un­der tremen­dous and pro­longed stress.