White House keeps pushing for Covid-19 funding as concerns over BA.2 mount
With Daniel Lippman
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— Top Biden administration officials went to Democrats to ask for Covid-19 funding, prompting an apology from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
— The White House is watching Europe’s Covid-19 surge. BA.2 is not the dominant variant in the U.S. — yet.
— Ashish Jha will take over from Jeff Zients in leading the administration’s Covid-19 response shop. It won’t be easy.
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THE COVID FUNDING QUEST CONTINUES — Nancy Pelosi apologized to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and top infectious disease adviser Anthony Fauci for having to appeal personally to Democratic lawmakers for Covid-19 funding, our colleagues Sarah Ferris, Marianne Levine and Adam Cancryn report.
The apology came when two top Biden Administration officials pleaded with lawmakers to find a way to approve $15 billion in domestic and foreign coronavirus aid. Last week, Democratic leaders stripped the funding from the bipartisan government spending bill after members rebelled over paying for some of the package from states’ unused funds.
Since then, the White House has been telling anyone who will listen plenty is at stake, sending up flares over declining testing capabilities, dwindling supplies of therapeutics and the looming cutoff of critical programs, including one that reimburses providers for treating uninsured Covid patients.
Pelosi insists it’ll happen — “We’re just going to have to pass it,” she said — but how they’ll pay for it and get it past the Senate remains a mystery, at least to us.
Meanwhile, earlier on Thursday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky asked lawmakers to make “an investment in public health and public health infrastructure such that we do not have to sort of scramble from one infectious disease challenge or one health challenge to another.”
“We came into this pandemic with an incredibly frail public health infrastructure,” she said during a panel held by the Bipartisan Policy Center. “We came in at a time where our laboratory infrastructure was not there, where our data infrastructure was not there … we’ve made huge strides during this pandemic. But it has demonstrated that we have much more work to do.”
ALL EYES ON EUROPE — White House officials are watching the surge of Covid-19 cases in Europe warily, Erin Banco, Adam Cancryn and Krista report. Over the past two years, the U.S. has experienced Covid waves several weeks after similar waves hit Europe.
In recent days, officials from the White House Covid-19 task force and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have met to game out how the administration will respond if cases begin to rise drastically, according to three senior officials.
The group has discussed the possibility of recommending communities reinstitute mask mandates indoors and how to ensure hospitals across the country are prepared for a potential spike in patients. Officials have also debated whether and when to recommend a fourth Covid-19 shot.
The CDC says the Omicron subvariant BA.2 that’s driving the European wave isn’t the dominant variant in the U.S., but it could take over in the coming weeks.
JHA IS IN, ZIENTS IS OUT — Well, soon anyway. President Joe Biden said Thursday that Brown University’s Ashish Jha is next up to lead the White House Covid-19 task force, POLITICO’s Samuel Benson writes.
Jha, dean of Brown’s Public School of Health, will replace Jeffrey Zients, who has headed the Biden administration’s coronavirus response since January 2021. He’ll leave the post to return to private life in April.
Jha comes to the job at a tricky moment, as surges across the pond are causing serious concern, the administration’s ability to respond to future threats is running low on cash and many Americans are really, really over this pandemic.
“Dr. Jha is one of the leading public health experts in America, and a well known figure to many Americans from his wise and calming public presence,” Biden said in a statement. “And as we enter a new moment in the pandemic — executing on my National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan and managing the ongoing risks from COVID — Dr. Jha is the perfect person for the job.”
MODERNA ASKS FDA TO AUTHORIZE SECOND BOOSTER DOSE — On Thursday, Moderna requested the FDA to grant emergency use authorization to a fourth dose of its Covid-19 vaccine for adults who already received a booster dose of any approved or authorized shot, POLITICO’s David Lim and Lauren Gardner report.
The FDA is set to convene its advisory committee of vaccine experts next month to deliberate how to approach Covid booster shots moving forward, including whether and when they’ll be needed and for which populations.
EXPANDING NYC PSYCH UNITS JUST A ‘BAND-AID’ — That’s what health experts in New York City are saying as elected officials push to increase psychiatric bed numbers to address the needs of the city’s mentally ill homeless population, write POLITICO’s Amanda Eisenberg, Shannon Young and Deanna Garcia.
Hospital psych beds have decreased dramatically in New York in the last 20 years. Gov. Kathy Hochul has called for “major investments to improve psychiatric support for those in crisis,” including $27.5 million for inpatient psychiatric beds statewide, more than $12 million for 500 supportive housing beds and nearly $10 million for recruitment and retention of psychiatrist and psychiatric nurses.
But advocates say that without addressing affordable and safe housing at the same time, patients will continue to fall into a cycle of being discharged and returning to the streets.
CALIFORNIA TO THE RESCUE — California lawmakers are stepping in to help residents of other states facing potential new restrictions on gender-affirming care and abortion services.
On Thursday, State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) announced plans for a bill that would provide legal protections to transgender children seeking gender-affirming health care — and the parents who face potential prosecution if they let them get it, writes POLITICO’S Chris Ramirez.
The bill would reject out-of-state court judgments that remove a child from parental custody for seeking gender-affirming health care. It would also bar compliance with out-of-state subpoenas on health care information while making arrest warrants in such cases the lowest law enforcement policy, said Wiener.
Another California bill unveiled Thursday would help people coming from out-of-state to access and cover the costs of abortion services, writes Victoria Colliver.
The bill would create a fund, described by the bill’s authors as the first of its kind, using state and philanthropic dollars to help low-income Californians and out-of-state residents afford the care and related costs associated with abortion, including travel and child care.
31 MILLION AMERICANS STILL LIGHTING UP — Fewer American adults are smoking now than at any point in the last half-century, POLITICO’s Katherine Ellen Foley writes. A CDC study looked at data from the 2020 National Health Interview Survey and found that about 31 million adults — or 12.5 percent of the population — were active smokers. That’s the lowest recorded rate since at least 1965. The percentage rises to 19 percent when it includes Americans’ use of all tobacco products, such as e-cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco and pipes.
IN EUROPE, COVID-19 DISINFO GOES TO WAR — As the war in Ukraine absorbs Europe’s attention, Western anti-vaccine groups and conspiracy theorists have shifted from parroting falsehoods about the global pandemic to peddling misinformation about the war, our colleagues in Europe Laura Kayali and Mark Scott write.
A lot of that information is framing Russia as the good guy. According to misinformation experts and fact-checking groups, sprawling online communities that had previously pushed back against Covid-19 restrictions are now positioning Russia’s invasion as being between Kyiv and its Western allies, who are cast as New World Order oppressors, and Moscow.
“Conspiracy theories call for more conspiracy theories,” said Rudy Reichstadt, director of France’s Conspiracy Watch website. Groups were already actively spreading Covid-19 misinformation on Facebook, YouTube and Telegram, Reichstadt said. “The pipes are ready; they just need to be filled.”
Hailey Ray is now U.S. PAC and advocacy manager at GSK Consumer Healthcare. She previously was director of political affairs at the Auto Care Association.
Molly Meegan is now chief legal officer and general counsel at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She previously was deputy general counsel at the Human Rights Campaign.
Community clinics are struggling to keep their workers as the pandemic drags on in California, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Washington Post writes that the $16 billion plan to modernize veterans’ medical records poses threats to their health.
