On Thursday, three years and 100 days after the Trump administration declared coronavirus a public health emergency, the Biden administration allowed the emergency declaration to expire, prompting the government to classify Covid-19 as any other respiratory disease. We are entering a new era of equal treatment.
If the coronavirus pandemic was a war, the United States is officially entering peacetime.
But interviews with senior federal and state health officials, including the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of the Food and Drug Administration, reveal that while the U.S.’s ability to fight Covid-19 has improved significantly, it’s not perfect. . Prepare for radically different future variants or new pandemics.
State health officials tasked with tracking the coronavirus are burnt out and the department is understaffed. President Biden’s coronavirus response team will soon be disbanded. The White House has yet to implement congressional directives to create a new Pandemic Preparedness Office, with major officials including coronavirus response coordinator Ashish K. Jaa and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle P. Wallensky. I don’t even serve as an official. Control and prevention resign or are about to resign.
Dr. Jah and other federal health officials have spent months laying the groundwork for an end to the public health emergency. The Biden administration has set up programs to provide free vaccines to the uninsured and to support medical research into new vaccines and treatments. But officials say the budget is limited. Congress has refused to give the administration new funding for its pandemic response.
When asked if the country was prepared for a new pandemic, Dr. Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, simply replied, “No.” Biden’s health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, was silent for several seconds before answering the same question.
“It depends,” Becerra finally said, adding: We are ready to deal with Covid. If it’s something completely different, bird flu, I’m a little more concerned. If it turns out to be some kind of bioweapon, that’s a whole other matter. ”
In an interview, Dr. Jah said the state of emergency declaration gave the government and the national health care system the flexibility to take special measures during the crisis, such as setting up hospital beds in parking lots.Brown University Public Dr. Jah, who has told colleagues that he intends to return to his job as dean of the School of Health Sciences, said such measures were no longer necessary.
But he warned that the virus hasn’t gone away. More than 1,000 people still die from Covid-19 in the US every week, according to CDC
“Covid will be with us, but we know how to live with it in a way that doesn’t have to cause chaos or put people in hospitals. Worse,” said Dr Jha. “And I know how to monitor and manage this virus, so if things change, I’ll be prepared if I do things differently.”
In the short term, the end of the state of emergency will not result in dramatic changes for Americans, but some may face new costs for coronavirus testing. Companies no longer need to cover up to eight home inspections per month. People with Medicare or private insurance may pay for the lab test.
At this time, the vaccine will continue to be provided free of charge as the government stockpiles it. As it makes its way to the commercial market later this year, it will remain free for most people with insurance. For the uninsured, the Biden administration plans to spend more than $1 billion on a new program to offer free shots, but questions remain about how the initiative will work.
It is unclear when Paxlovid, the leading antiviral drug for Covid-19, will enter the commercial market. Some parts may have to be collected.
Some experts fear that policymakers and elected officials who have already put Covid-19 in their rearview mirrors will forget about it entirely once the state of emergency is lifted.
Gary Edson, president of the Covid Collaborative, a group of experts working to inform the federal government’s response, said: “I worry that it will be interpreted as a ‘mission accomplished’ moment. From that point of view, we have given up all hope and given up all mobilization for defense readiness.”
The country has learned and absorbed several lessons from Covid-19. CDC is currently tracking the spread of the virus by examining wastewater. The national medical reserve, the Strategic National Reserve, is much better equipped. As of earlier this month, with 352 million N95 masks, 1.3 billion gloves and 150,000 ventilators for her, the government has more than 600 million home coronavirus tests on hand. I’m here. The branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, which handles logistics such as testing and vaccine distribution, has been strengthened.
Yet an estimated 7 million immunocompromised American adults are particularly at risk from Covid-19. It is no longer approved for use by the FDA because it is ineffective against The administration relies heavily on Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of Covid-19.
“We need effective monoclonals against the current mutation,” said Dr. David A. Kessler, who left the Biden administration in January after overseeing the administration’s vaccination and treatment program. and we should not rely solely on highly effective oral antivirals.”
Overall, more than 1.1 million people have died from Covid-19 in the United States. This is more than the number of deaths during both world wars. But while the military builds warships and fighter planes in peacetime, public health has long been stuck in a cycle of what experts call panic and inaction.
The Covid Crisis Group, a panel of experts led by Philip D. Zelikow, a historian at the University of Virginia who ran the panel that investigated the September 11 attacks, said Congress and policy makers should take national security He says we need to look at the threat of infectious diseases through a lens. The group has studied the response to the pandemic for two years and recently published its findings in the book Lessons from the Covid War.
The top federal health official said the analogy of military readiness was apt.
“What if we funded public health the way we funded the military?” said Dr. Nirav D. Shah, CDC Chief Deputy Administrator.
Instead, Biden administration officials say they are scrambling for money to prepare for the pandemic. One concern is that the end of the emergency will reduce the economic incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs, treatments and vaccines.
“One of the most important parts of the warp speed and overall response to the pandemic has been to reduce uncertainty in the industry by obtaining funding from the government,” said FDA Commissioner Robert M. Dr. Caliph said in an interview referring to Operation Warp. Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine initiative. “Because what you want the industry to do now is invest and take risks.”
To encourage innovation, the Biden administration spend $5 billion A new initiative called Project Next Gen will develop a new generation of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. Officials say little about how the money will be used. The Biden administration failed to convince Congress to pay for the program, said Dawn O’Connell, an emergency preparedness officer for the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We asked, asked, asked for additional funding to be able to run the next generation,” she said. When there was no funding from Congress, federal health officials decided to use unused coronavirus response funds.
For now, federal regulators have settled on a more gradual strategy. Redesigning his yearly Covid booster shot to target new variants of Omicron. The recalibrated shots will most likely be deployed by early September.
Once the public health emergency is over, local and federal health officials will not know who has Covid-19 or where the virus is spreading. CDC and local health departments use the information to educate communities about wearing masks and other precautions.
But once the emergency ends, laboratories will no longer have to report coronavirus test results to the government. Last week, the CDC announced it would no longer track Covid-19 levels in the community or the percentage of tests that have returned positive.
Instead, agency officials said they would rely on wastewater samples and hospital data as indicators to monitor the virus. Hospitals will still be required to report coronavirus cases after the emergency ends, but in less detail than before.
After Dr. Jah’s departure, federal COVID-19 leadership could function as a committee effort among agency heads, with O’Connell as central coordinator. O’Connell discussed a new Pandemic Preparedness Office with White House officials last week, but he said he was unaware of its leadership plans.
“We’re just waiting to see where it lands,” she said.
In recent weeks, Dr. Jar talked to a leading virologist Measure the potential of another Omicron-like variant. One of those scientists, Dr. Dan H. Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said in an interview that the way the coronavirus mutates is almost He said he told Dr. Jar that he meant it was impossible. It’s about providing more than an “intuitive” prediction, he said, of about 20% over the next two years.
Becerra insists his department is ready for whatever happens.
“When a large-scale war is over, we should not let our guard down completely,” he said. “Even if it seems over, it can easily flare up again. It’s not.”
