White House to make major decision on global Covid funding

The people and politics driving global health.

Feb 03, 2022 View in browser   By Erin Banco THE BIG IDEA Maria Margarita Bernal, 82, receives the second dose of the Novavax vaccine during the rural vaccination day on April 08, 2021 in Chaguani, Colombia. | Mariano Vimos/Vizzor Image/Getty Images FUNDS FOR COVID GLOBAL RESPONSE — The White House could decide to ask Congress for billions of dollars in additional funding for the administration's 2022 global Covid-19 response as soon as this week, according to two senior officials with knowledge of the matter. Money matters: That funding could be a lifeline for the United States Agency for International Development, the main federal agency helping low- and middle-income countries administer Covid-19 shots. Over the past year, USAID has worked with the COVAX vaccine facility and other global health organizations to help countries worldwide ramp up their vaccination rates by training health staff and finding ways to store the shots and distribute them equitably. As POLITICO first reported , the agency is running low on cash and needs more money to help fund the administration's efforts to put more shots in arms across the world in 2022. All in writing: In a letter to President Joe Biden last week, a group of Democrats on Capitol Hill asked the White House to issue a formal request for $17 billion in supplemental appropriations to aid the fight against Covid-19 abroad. Negotiations between the White House and Congress are still underway, and lawmakers are working toward finalizing a top-line number for the Covid-19 relief package. The White House proposed numbers for the global Covid-19 portions total $10.95 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The overall effort includes $1.65 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Center for Global Health; $9.32 billion for State and USAID; $2.2 billion of USAID's Global VAX program ; $3 billion to fund lifesaving supplies and health care workers; and $1 billion for humanitarian assistance. Anxiety at USAID: Still, how much money USAID will receive from Congress and when the agency could tap into those funds are still in question. Much of the agency's work on Covid-19 in 2022 will rely on that additional money, and officials inside USAID are increasingly anxious about having to put programs on hold, according to one senior administration official involved in the federal government's vaccination efforts on the ground. That same official said the Biden administration is internally focused on finding new ways to get shots into arms quicker, particularly in African countries — an effort that would rely heavily on USAID. WELCOME TO GLOBAL PULSE WELCOME BACK TO GLOBAL PULSE, where your hosts wonder why we still look to Punxsutawney Phil to predict the weather when the rodent has gotten it right 40 percent of the time, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Global Pulse is a team effort. Thanks to editors Eli Reyes andBarbara Van Tine. Follow us on Twitter: @ErinBanco and @_daniel_payne. THE STATE OF THE PANDEMIC LIMITING COVID-19 'COLLATERAL DAMAGE' — In the race to vaccinate people in low- and middle-income countries in 2022 against Covid-19, global health advocates have repeatedly sought more help from the international community to get shots in arms. To that end, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) continues to work with on-the-ground health systems in the Middle East and Africa to help inoculate the local population and treat Covid-19 patients. The organization also treats patients when local health care systems are strained. A 'most useful tool': MSF's John Johnson, a medical vaccination referent, told Global Pulse the organization has seen a "big jump" in Covid infections in the countries it operates in, but it hasn't "seen the level of severity that we may have seen earlier in the pandemic." He said as many as 30 countries still need to significantly ramp up their vaccination rates to boost protection. " Vaccination is clearly the most useful tool we have right now in helping bring about the end of the pandemic. But we also see that there's clearly limitations with them, as we see in Europe and Israel and other places around the world," Johnson said, adding that "vaccination is not the only thing that will help stop the pandemic. "We have to also work with people on other ways to do the control. That means continuing different practices of wearing masks, infection control and infection prediction," he said. Prioritizing vaccination: As the global health community strives to vaccinate 70 percent of the world's population by mid-2022, Johnson said it will take more to get people immunized in countries where vaccination is not regarded as important. "Priority is a big thing in many countries where we work. In some places, Covid really hasn't been a huge public health priority, because it's not a huge problem for their population," Johnson said. "In Western Africa, for example, there's very, very low rates of severe Covid. And while many people in the population may have had Covid, not many of them have it severely." Collateral damage: Johnson said MSF is working to limit "collateral damage" from the pandemic. "That's one of our biggest concerns as a humanitarian organization," Johnson said. "Because of the last few years of Covid, there's been a very big drop in vaccination coverage for other vaccine-preventable diseases around the world. We've already seen outbreaks because not enough children have continued immunization." GLOBAL PULSE NUMBER 262,000 The number of jumbo jets that would be filled with most of the medical items the UN distributed in the first months of the pandemic that ended up as trash, according to a World Health Organization report. AROUND THE WORLD TRUMP'S SECRET VACCINE LIST — The Trump administration favored sending vaccines to allies like Israel and Taiwan over low- and middle-income countries, POLITICO's Erin Banco reports. The list showed the U.S. planned to send shots to countries based on politics over need, even as global health advocates and experts recommended the opposite approach. The list was compiled before the vaccine was authorized for use, but it was passed to the Biden administration. Other strategic allies that would have been first in line for U.S. vaccines included Canada, South Korea and some European nations. "We thought that the categories themselves made sense at the time," said Paul Mango, the former deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services. "The underserved countries were third on the list." NEXT-GEN COVID SHOTS — The World Health Organization has turned to pharmaceutical companies to help develop vaccines that protect against an ever-growing list of variants, POLITICO's Helen Collis reports. Some drug manufacturers are already testing Omicron-specific vaccines in clinical trials, while others are looking to develop new shots that would target multiple variants — an approach regulators encourage. While Covid could become like the flu — with regularly updated, seasonal vaccines tailored to each year's needs — it's too soon to tell, according to Sylvie Briand, director of the WHO's epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention department. It's possible the virus will become more predictable and less dangerous over time, but it could also become more dangerous over time without seasonal predictability. WHAT WE'RE CLICKING NPR: Africa may have reached the pandemic's holy grail. Nature: Where did Omicron come from? Three key theories. Financial Times : Telemedicine provides Afghanistan with much-needed link to global help.   Follow us

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