White House can’t afford a fourth COVID shot for people in US. Here’s what to know
Senior administration officials are warning of the consequences to the federal COVID-19 response if Congress fails to approve more relief funding.
White House officials said they have told Congress for months that existing funding for tests, treatments, and vaccines was drying up and that “additional funds would be needed.”
About $15 billion in new pandemic funds have been stalled, with some lawmakers saying the White House did not make a strong enough case for the money, according to Politico.
“There’s a doubt that they need this money with a lot of us,” Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, told Politico. “I’ve said this for weeks, a real accounting of the money [already spent on COVID-19] that the American people deserve and then go from there. If there’s no money left, and it’s not hidden somewhere, and if they show a need, then you got, maybe, a persuasive case.”
But senior officials said in a briefing on March 15 that further inaction will leave the U.S. unprepared and “cost us more lives” as medical experts warned of a potential increase in COVID cases.
Here’s what the Biden administration says will change if funding runs out.
Not enough booster shots
Senior administration officials were clear: the U.S. does not have the “adequate resources” to purchase enough COVID-19 booster shots for all Americans if another round is called for more widely.
“When Congress passed the supplemental bill in December of 2020 and the American Rescue Plan, the mRNA vaccines were envisioned as a two-shot vaccine,” administration officials said. “We’ve now administered nearly 100 million booster shots, and four shots are now recommended and available for immunocompromised people.”
On March 15, Pfizer and BioNTech requested an emergency use authorization for a fourth booster dose of their COVID-19 vaccine for adults 65 years old and older, citing earlier doses have shown waning protection over time and against certain variants, according to a news release.
Moderna followed Pfizer a couple of days later, with its own request for additional boosters for older adults.
The Food and Drug Administration said it would review the companies’ requests, but the agency has not yet decided on whether to authorize fourth doses.
But additional funding is essential, senior officials say, “to ensure enough fourth doses for all Americans or a variant-specific vaccine – should we ever need them.”
The U.S. would need to “purchase hundreds of millions of additional doses to ensure that every American could receive four shots,” Jen Kates, who leads global health policy at Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health research organization, told the Washington Post.
Diminishing testing capacity
Without additional funding, the White House said it will not have the ability to maintain its domestic capacity for free testing beyond June.
Administration officials said it would take months to rebuild capacity if they have to shut down current operations, adding that failure to invest now will leave the U.S. unprepared for any potential surges in cases.
“Providing funding only when cases rise is far too late to make a difference,” officials said.
Helping providers
Funds that currently reimburse doctors and providers caring for uninsured individuals will start scaling back in March until they end completely in early April, according to a White House briefing.
“The failure to provide additional resources soon will have severe consequences in the near term, as I’ve outlined: fewer monoclonal antibodies treatments, fewer tests, fewer treatments for the immunocompromised, and a risk of running short on vaccines,” a senior administration official said.
Why the federal government is paying for it
Some have questioned why the federal government is still paying for this level of pandemic response and whether the U.S. should transition efforts to the private sector.
The White House argues if insurance companies were in control, they would have to compete against other countries to get access to things like vaccines, as opposed to the U.S. government ensuring that all Americans have “easy, free access to something that can save their life.”
The White House hopes that in the future, it can safely transition some of COVID-19 treatments to the traditional insurance-based health care market. But because of immediate needs, the administration says it needs Congress to act now to maintain stability.
‘Discussions are underway’ for bill changes
A senior Democratic aide told Politico that “discussions are underway” about making changes to the spending bill that would be acceptable to the Senate.
“The aide also stressed that they were sticking to the $15.6 billion figure even as Biden administration officials argued Tuesday that at least $22.5 billion is needed just for the short term,” Politico reported.
This story was originally published March 22, 2022 at 2:46 PM with the headline "White House can’t afford a fourth COVID shot for people in US. Here’s what to know."
