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Analysis: Biden’s new global vaccine push is running out of funds --Politico
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The Biden administration is turbocharging its effort to boost inoculations in low- and middle-income countries to prevent new, more-transmissible variants from emerging — an effort that would also protect Americans at home, according to three senior administration officials working on the effort.
But the Biden team is facing a major obstacle: It is running out of money to support the global vaccination push, and negotiations with Congress on securing new funding have stalled.
Without additional cash, the Biden administration could fall behind in its 2022 Covid-19 goal of getting shots into arms. That includes its work with COVAX, the global vaccine facility, and local governments to boost inoculations in the 30 countries with vaccination rates below 10 percent, the officials said.
And because COVAX relies heavily on the U.S. for vaccine and financial support, any delay in the administration’s last-mile vaccination campaign would slow inoculations — a scenario that could set the world back in moving from pandemic to endemic status.
“For the United States to not only maintain but build on what [it has] been doing, there’s without question going to be a need for additional resources,” said Gayle Smith, who led the State Department’s global Covid-19 response last year. “There are big numbers in terms of what’s needed, but they’re nowhere near what the cost of this pandemic, continuing through a third year, is.” ...
...to make sure the donated shots to COVAX get into arms in 2022, the White House may make an official request for more Covid-19 funding from Congress. That request is expected to include money for the administration’s vaccination effort led by USAID. The agency has told lawmakers that it needs $19 billion in additional funding for 2022 to complete its Covid-19 work, according to two other people with direct knowledge of the matter. But the White House’s proposed numbers for the global Covid-19 supplemental funding — numbers it passed on to agencies last week — total $10.95 billion, according to one of those individuals. ..
“The amount of money that we want to allocate for this is so modest, compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars that we are spending taking care of our economic and physical health as a country,” said. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who is leading a group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill to push the administration to allocate $17 billion to the global Covid-19 vaccination effort. “We should allocate this money and then some immediately, and not give it a second thought.”
HHS on Tuesday said it needs $30 billion from Congress for its domestic Covid-19 response. It’s still unclear when, or if, the White House will officially request supplemental funding for its global Covid-19 vaccination campaign. ...
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