Health

Biden Administration Pushes to Save Key Covid Programs in Debt Ceiling Talks

Biden administration officials familiar with the negotiations say the White House is trying to preserve funding for key parts of the federal government’s coronavirus response in debt-limit talks with House Republicans.

Administration officials are seeking to secure about $5 billion in funding for a program to develop next-generation coronavirus vaccines and treatments. Officials say they are also considering setting aside more than $1 billion for efforts to provide free coronavirus vaccinations to uninsured Americans.

Funding the administration is using for the two programs has already been approved by Congress, but that funding is now at risk as Republicans seek to extract spending cuts from the Biden administration as a condition of raising the nation’s borrowing cap. may be on the verge of

House Republicans want to recover tens of billions of dollars unspent on the coronavirus relief bill as part of a debt-restriction deal. It is unclear what funds will be recovered as part of the deal, but administration and congressional negotiators have found some consensus on the matter. President Biden said earlier this month that canceling unspent coronavirus funds was “under consideration.”

“If debt ceiling negotiations go awry and critical compromises are needed that affect critical spending on health and social programs, we face a very big set of problems,” said the country’s top executive. Director Dr. Rajeev Venkaya said. Aerium Therapeutics, which is working on the development of a new monoclonal antibody treatment against the novel coronavirus.

Representatives for the White House and California Republican Party Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not respond to requests for comment.

Some White House officials see the vaccine development program as: ProjectNextGen, as the most important corona countermeasure to be protected in the debt ceiling negotiations. It loosely models the Trump administration’s vaccine development program, known as Operation Warp Speed, which launched a series of effective injections into the American public in record time.

Biden administration officials this year are using other coronavirus funding to NextGen, including some of the funding designated for testing, with the aim of delivering a more durable or effective vaccine early next year. It was reused in support of the program. While no contracts have yet been signed with vaccine manufacturers, the program is the most ambitious of the administration’s coronavirus response, which entered a new phase after the expiration of the public health emergency on May 11. This could be one of the initiatives.

Ofer Levy, Ph.D., director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Children’s Hospital Boston and consultant to the Food and Drug Administration, said that finding a coronavirus vaccine that would provide more lasting protection and require lower doses than current vaccinations would help. He said the project NextGen is important. Manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer.

“This is the foundation of national defense,” he said.

Biden administration officials say the federal government’s coronavirus response could also be hampered by other cuts that could be built into debt relief agreements, such as withdrawing funding to track new variants of the virus. said to be sexual.

The debt relief bill passed by House Republicans last month would recoup unused coronavirus funds from various pandemic relief packages.Democratic Party warned He said the bill would take money away from disease tracking at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, supplies to the National Strategic Stockpile, and relief money to safety-net hospitals and nursing homes.

Project NextGen aims to fund the development of a coronavirus vaccine using technology different from those manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer. Such new vaccines may offer longer-term protection against a wider range of coronavirus variants, or better protection against infections.

A vaccine administered to the nose or mouth, known as a mucosal vaccine, is one option administration officials plan to support, aiming to introduce it as early as the fall of 2024, officials said. rice field. In the short term, federal regulators are expected to reauthorize boosters later this year.

The project will also fund the development of a pancoronavirus vaccine to protect against various coronaviruses. The agency will also fund the development of new monoclonal antibody treatments.

Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an interview earlier this month that federal officials are researching potential vaccine options for the project and selecting potential manufacturers.

“We’re looking at all of this and figuring out what the gaps are, what we need most right now, and investing in those candidates,” O’Connell says of the different technologies that can be used. mentioned about. for a vaccine.

By developing a vaccine that is administered directly to the nose or mouth, where the virus first enters and begins replicating, the scientists hope to stop further infection before it begins, making the virus more dramatic than current injectables. hope to reduce the spread of

Public health experts say a pancoronavirus vaccine could magnify people’s immune responses to the virus, and in the process could help people build up defenses before new variants emerge. I think there is

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