4 goals identified as U.S. reveals new covid plan

A pedestrian removes his mask Wednesday in Philadelphia as U.S. health officials announced a new response strategy to transition to a “new normal” in dealing with the coronavirus.
(AP/Matt Rourke)
A pedestrian removes his mask Wednesday in Philadelphia as U.S. health officials announced a new response strategy to transition to a “new normal” in dealing with the coronavirus. (AP/Matt Rourke)


WASHINGTON -- The White House unveiled its new coronavirus response strategy Wednesday, aimed at turning the corner on the worst public health crisis in a century while also preparing for the next threat.

The plan, meant to help the United States transition to what some are calling a "new normal," has four main goals: protecting against and treating covid-19; preparing for new variants; avoiding shutdowns; and fighting the virus abroad.

Much of the plan requires funding from Congress. The administration recently told congressional officials that it could need as much as $30 billion to sustain the pandemic response. One outside adviser to the White House, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, said that the United States needed to spend much more -- on the order of $100 billion over the next year, and billions more after that -- to be fully prepared.

"Congress has to think of this as an investment in biosecurity for the country," said Emanuel. "We should not be penny-wise and dollar-foolish."

The strategy comes on the heels of the president's State of the Union address Tuesday night and as new U.S. cases decline, although deaths remain high. President Joe Biden mentioned a component of the plan in his speech: a new "test to treat" initiative that he said would allow Americans to get tested at a pharmacy and, if they are positive, "receive antiviral pills on the spot at no cost."

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra made an appearance Wednesday alongside the health officials who hold weekly White House briefings.

Becerra highlighted another element of the plan: boosting research into long covid-19, the long-term symptoms some people experience after infection. He pledged to open "new centers of excellence" around the country to provide high-quality care to long-covid-19 patients.

A bipartisan group, led by two former governors, has been pressing Biden to do more for tens of thousands of children in the United States who have lost parents or caregivers to covid-19. The plan says the president will direct federal agencies to review their programs to formulate a more coordinated "bereavement response" for such children, who now number around 200,000.

"This is all part of our commitment to be there for Americans who have long-term physical and mental health needs caused by covid," Becerra said.

The idea behind the strategy is to get the nation out of crisis mode and to a place, Biden has said, where the virus will no longer disrupt everyday life. It includes a pledge for the administration to work with Congress to "give schools and businesses guidance, tests and supplies to stay open, including tools to improve ventilation and air filtration."

Experts generally praised the plan as a good step forward. Rick Bright, CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation's Pandemic Prevention Institute, called it a "great start," adding that the plan should "serve as a firm foundation to build upon, to extend our preparedness posture beyond covid."

But Jay A. Winsten, director of the Harvard Initiative on Media Strategies for Public Health, said the 100-day timeline for vaccine development might not be fast enough for a highly transmissible variant like omicron. The first omicron sample was collected in South Africa on Nov. 8, he said; the United States reached the peak of the omicron wave 67 days later, on Jan. 14.

More than 200 million Americans have been vaccinated. Two new waves -- one fueled by the delta variant, the other by omicron -- have driven up deaths to nearly 1 million. Covid-19 treatments have been developed, including the Pfizer drug Paxlovid, which will be integral to the "test and treat" initiative.

Although Paxlovid pills have been relatively scarce since they were authorized late last year, Biden said in his speech Tuesday that "Pfizer is working overtime to get us 1 million pills this month and more than double that next month."

There is an average of about 60,000 new U.S. cases a day, according to a New York Times database. That is far less than the daily average of 800,000 in January, at the peak of the winter surge fueled by omicron. But it is still much higher than the daily caseload in June, before delta caused a summer surge.

Even as the White House asserts that things are getting better and new federal guidelines suggest 70% of Americans can stop wearing masks for now, large groups of people remain at risk. Children younger than 5 are not yet eligible for vaccines. On Monday, New York state health officials released data showing that Pfizer's vaccine is much less effective in preventing infection in 5- to 11-year-olds than in adolescents or adults.

And an estimated 7 million Americans have weak immune systems, illnesses or other disabilities that make them more vulnerable to severe covid-19. The White House announced last week that it was taking several steps to make masks and tests more accessible to those groups.

Gregg Gonsalves, a public health researcher at Yale University, said that with mask mandates dropping around the country, the administration -- and in particular the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which relaxed its mask guidance last week -- had put too much of a burden on vulnerable Americans to protect themselves.

One mask mandate that will not be dropped, at least not for the next few weeks, is the one that Biden imposed on airplanes, trains and other forms of travel. Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said that it would remain in effect until at least March 18, but that the CDC is reviewing it.

In his State of the Union address, Biden called on Congress to provide new funding for the administration to stockpile more tests, masks and pills. And he said that Americans who ordered free at-home tests from a government website, covidtests.gov, would be able to order more next week.

"I cannot promise a new variant won't come," Biden said. "But I can promise you we'll do everything within our power to be ready if it does."

SPENDING QUESTIONS

While Biden's new strategy is in the works, three dozen Republican senators told the White House on Wednesday that they may be unwilling to approve new coronavirus aid until they first learn how much money the U.S. government has already spent.

The letter, helmed by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, arrived days after the Biden administration asked Congress to approve $30 billion to boost public health as part of a still-forming deal to fund the government and stave off a shutdown at the end of next week.

In their note, the 36 Republicans stressed they have supported "unprecedented investments in vaccines, therapeutics and testing" in the past, including multiple bipartisan stimulus packages adopted under President Donald Trump. But they fretted it is still "not yet clear why additional funding is needed," particularly now, given a lack of transparency in the roughly $6 trillion approved to date.

The GOP lawmakers cited a recent investigation from The Washington Post, which documented the U.S. government's struggles in overseeing its own pandemic stimulus programs.The troubles prompted President Joe Biden to announce a new campaign to combat such coronavirus aid-related fraud during the State of the Union address on Tuesday.

In response, Romney and his allies a day later asked the Biden administration for a more thorough accounting as to how the White House might spend $30 billion in new aid. And they further pressed the administration to deliver more detail on how much actually remains in existing programs, including those enacted last year under Biden's roughly $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

"Before we would consider supporting an additional $30 billion or covid-19 relief," the group of GOP lawmakers wrote, "Congress must receive a full accounting of how the government has already spent the first $6 trillion."

Romney said that the Republicans he's spoken with want to see this data "before we quickly write a check for another $30 billion." The senator added of the president: "My assumption is, of the $1.9 trillion sent out in March [2021], he ought to be able to find $30 billion from that figure."

In response to the letter, an official with the Office of Management and Budget said Wednesday that the Biden administration has briefed Congress regularly on the status of stimulus funds. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said nearly all of the funds set aside for the Department of Health and Human Services have been used.

While Democrats have promised to append the aid to a long-term spending deal, known as the omnibus, lawmakers have until March 11 to reach a bipartisan bargain with Republicans, otherwise key federal agencies are set to shutdown.

"Congress must pass more covid funding, now, so we can be ready by funding vaccines, testing, therapeutics and supporting our health-care workers," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in an appeal to members on the chamber floor Wednesday. "If Congress waits for another variant to arrive, it'll be too late. We need our Republican colleagues to join us in a bipartisan way."

Information for this article was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times and Tony Romm of The Washington Post.


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