Senior U.S. health officials on Wednesday reiterated calls for Congress to accept funding for the nation’s fight against Covid-19, warning that failure to act now would result in unnecessary loss of life in the fall and winter.
Their warning comes as new infections and hospitalizations increase as more transmissible variants of omicron take over the United States.
The nation reported more than 94,000 new infections a day on average on Monday, up 25 percent from the previous week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, hospitalizations have increased by 18% in the last week by about 3,000 people taking Covid every day on average, according to the CDC.
Dr Ashish Ja, Covid’s new White House Response Coordinator, said the fact must be taken into account that many people are now doing tests at home, the results of which are not reflected in the data.
“We know that the number of infections is actually significantly higher than that, it’s hard to know exactly how many, but we know that many people are diagnosed through home tests,” Ja said during a White House update on Wednesday’s pandemic. . “Obviously we underestimate the cases. There are a lot of infections all over America.”
CDC Director Rochelle Valensky said 32% of Americans live in areas with medium or high levels of Covid, an indicator that includes infections and hospitalizations. The CDC recommends that people wear masks in indoor public places when their community has a high level of Covid. These communities can be found on the health agency’s website.
However, the current wave of Covid cases, based on available data, is about 90% lower than the first omicron wave in the winter, which was unprecedented in scale and speed. Hospitalizations are also 86% lower than the peak of this wave.
Ja said the United States has a better national system to combat the current wave than in previous pandemic periods. For example, Pfizer’s trial antiviral treatment is widely available for the first time. It is prescribed to people infected with Covid who are at high risk of serious illness. Ja said that national doctors write 20,000 prescriptions for Paxlovid every day.
The Biden administration now allows households to order eight Covid tests for free through covid.gov/tests. The Food and Drug Administration also approved third injections of Pfizer for children ages 5 to 11 this week. If the CDC gives up boosters for this age group on Thursday, anyone aged 5 and over will be entitled to at least three shots. People aged 50 and over can now receive a fourth dose, while people aged 12 and over can receive a fifth dose.
However, Ja said the United States has no money to buy more vaccines, treatments and produce Covid tests for the fall. He warned that the United States would face unnecessary loss of life if Congress failed to accept President Joe Biden’s request for $ 22.5 billion in funding for Covid. Public health officials expect a new wave of infection in the fall as immunity declines from vaccines, the virus mutates into more and more susceptible variants, and people head indoors to escape the colder weather.
“We need to plan a scenario where we don’t get more resources from Congress. I think it would be terrible. I think we would have a lot of unnecessary losses if that happened,” Ja said. More than two years after the pandemic, 1 million people in the United States have already died from Covid.
Ja said the FDA is likely to adopt revised vaccines this summer targeting mutations the virus has developed over the past two years to give people more lasting protection against Covid. However, he said the United States would only have the money to provide these next-generation vaccines for people at high risk for serious illness, the elderly and immunity if Congress did not provide the money. The United States will also be left without treatment for people who become infected, he said.
Ja also said that Covid test makers in the United States are already cutting workers and shutting down production lines because demand has fallen and the federal government does not have enough money to support them. In the coming weeks, they are likely to sell equipment and go completely out of business. This will leave the United States dependent on test makers in other countries if there is a surge in the fall and demand for tests suddenly rises, as it did in the winter.
Jha will not give a forecast of what the audience should expect in the fall. He said the patterns varied considerably, as predictions depended on how much immunity there was in the first omicron wave population and how much that immunity would protect against a possible future option. He said passing Congress on funding for next-generation vaccines for all Americans would also change the outlook for the fall wave.
Ja said he had talked regularly with lawmakers, especially Republicans, who blocked the Senate from handing over $ 10 billion in additional funding to Covid. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, struck a much smaller deal in April. However, conservative lawmakers refuse to support the deal unless the CDC re-enforces a public health law used by the United States to deport asylum seekers arriving at the Mexican border during the pandemic.
Ja said he spoke to lawmakers again this morning on Capitol Hill and was optimistic that Congress would eventually handle the Covid funds.
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