Funding fight puts future of US pandemic response in peril

The battle over funding COVID-19-related measures is putting the future of the country’s pandemic response in jeopardy, risking shortages of supplies like tests or treatments if a new variant hits again.

The government is running out of money for key tools like vaccines, treatments and tests, but funding to help pay for such provisions was stripped out of the must-pass $1.5 trillion government funding bill in Congress on Wednesday amid a dispute about how to pay for it.  

That leaves the pandemic-focused funds with no clear path forward to be signed into law, and alarm bells ringing about the blow to the country’s preparedness to deal with another wave of infections should one arise.  

The episode in the House this week that led to the funding being dropped also highlights how hard it will be to pass any additional money for longer-term COVID-19 needs or to prepare for future pandemics, which the White House and health experts say will be needed, if even immediate pandemic funding cannot get through Congress.  

“It’s absolutely devastating,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, ​​said of the funding being stripped.

“It’s not like you go through a hurricane in Florida and think you’re never going to experience that again,” she said. “What more is it going to take for us to realize that preparedness is cheaper than response?” 

Congress on Wednesday had appeared set to pass $15.6 billion in COVID-19 funding, offset in part by rescinding a portion of aid to states passed in an earlier relief bill. But a group of House Democrats objected to their states losing out on some relief funding, even though Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) noted that all states would still receive at least 91 percent of their expected funds.  

In the face of the revolt, Pelosi stripped out the COVID-19 funding, a move she called “heartbreaking,” to allow the larger government funding bill to pass. The House is set to vote on a separate COVID-19 funding measure next week, without the state offset, but that is likely to die in the Senate given that Senate Republicans have insisted that the COVID-19 measure be fully paid for.  

That leaves the funding stalled.  

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday did not offer a path forward to get it through Congress, but said simply, “We need this money.” 

“Without additional resources from Congress, the results are dire,” she added. The White House says that without more money, testing capacity will start declining this month, potentially requiring months of ramp up if a new variant causes another surge.  

Monoclonal antibody treatments will be exhausted by May, and antiviral pills, like Pfizer’s highly effective Paxlovid, will run out by September. Those pills need to be ordered ahead of time, the administration noted.  

The funding considered by Congress also would have included money for development of vaccines to fight new variants.  

Lawmakers on Thursday also engaged in some finger-pointing without detailing a clear path.  

Asked about the White House’s dire warnings if the funding is not provided, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, noted it was House Democrats who removed the money. 

“It was their play,” he said. “It was in there, and all they had to do was produce the votes on their side to keep it in.” 

“There are a handful of our members who are interested in some of the things that are in there, but I don’t think [it can pass] unless it’s fully offset,” he added.  

Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he did not necessarily think the money was needed in the first place.  

“That’s OK with me if they want to strip out the money,” he said of House Democrats. “I don’t even know if they need any more.” 

Shelby said he still wants the administration to provide a fuller accounting of how money that has already been provided has been spent.  

“If they really needed the money we ought to do it, but there’s a lot of ambiguity,” he said.  

The White House previously sent to Congress a table showing $0 remaining across a wide range of COVID-19 spending categories. 

“If we had that money to move around, we would be moving it,” Psaki said Thursday when asked about transferring funds from other areas.  

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, suggested one possible solution could be to change the state aid offset so that every state was losing out on some funds, rather than a subset of states disproportionately bearing the burden.  

While much of the focus has been on the damage to the domestic response, the stripped-out funding also included $5 billion in global aid, such as vaccinating people in other countries. 

Advocates and some lawmakers had already said $5 billion was much less than what was needed to boost vaccination rates abroad and help prevent new variants from forming and threatening the United States.  

The lack of the global funding “really threatens the ability of the global community to control COVID,” said Jen Kates, director of global health & HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.  

The foundation’s figures show just 12 percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose.  

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) put the blame on Republicans, who have resisted new COVID-19 money unless it is paid for with cuts to money previously provided.  

“We’re going to have to vote it separately on the floor of the United States Senate,” Warren said. “The Republicans who blocked this funding are going to have to stand up in front of the American people and explain why they think we shouldn’t be prepared for the next COVID variant.”  

Asked if she could agree to finding different offsets to pay for the money, Warren said, “We can’t afford not to find a way to fund this.” 

Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.), the top Republican on the Appropriations health subcommittee, was more open than some of his GOP colleagues to the funds.   

“Those accounts are out of money,” he said. “And if you see a need for somebody continuing to produce vaccines, therapeutics and tests, you’re probably going to [have to] have some federal money to do that.”