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President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 program faced uncertainty Thursday, after U.S. lawmakers passed a massive new bill that would fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year, as well as provide further aid to Ukraine, but a last-minute snag resulted in COVID-19 money being dropped.
The bill originally contained $15.6 billion for both domestic and international efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. That includes testing, treatment and prevention.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the funding was being dropped, as Democrats disagreed over how it was paid for — by taking money from states — as Republicans refused to spend new money to respond to COVID.
The California Democrat suggested lawmakers would look for another avenue to approve the money.
“It is heartbreaking to remove the COVID funding, and we must continue to fight for urgently needed COVID assistance, but unfortunately that will not be included in this bill,” she wrote in a letter to colleagues.
The news comes as the U.S. is averaging 37,685 new cases a day, according to a New York Times tracker, down 51% from two weeks ago. The average daily number of hospitalizations stands at 33,761, down 44% from two weeks ago.
Deaths are averaging 1,369 a day, down 28% from two weeks ago, but still an undesirably high number.
See also: Novak Djokovic, still unvaccinated, can’t travel to U.S. for Miami and Indian Wells tournaments
Vaccine maker Moderna Inc.
MRNA,
said it began dosing patients in a Phase 2 clinical study assessing its experimental bivalent omicron-specific booster. This booster candidate has two components: an omicron-specific booster, and the COVID-19 vaccine, which is based on the original strain of the virus.
“Our goal has been to remain ahead of the virus, and we are committed to generating and sharing data with public health authorities as they prepare for the fall booster season,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a news release.
The study is set to enroll 375 adults at 20 sites in the U.S.
Moderna is testing a stand-alone omicron-specific booster candidate in a separate study.
Other COVID-19 news you should know about:
• Germany had another record one-day COVID case tally on Thursday, just as the country is set to drop its restrictions, Reuters reported. Germany reported 262,752 new infections, 52,079 more than a week ago, with the seven-day incidence rate rising to 1,389 infections per 100,000 people from 1,319 a day earlier. Another 259 people died, bringing the country’s total death toll to 125,023. The health ministry declared that the peak of the latest wave of the pandemic had been passed last week, when the country’s federal states agreed to relax coronavirus rules, including allowing discos and nightclubs to open again.
• Slovakia has started to administer the COVID vaccine developed by Novavax Inc.
NVAX,
the Slovak Spectator reported, and officials are hoping the more conventional vaccine will persuade vaccine-hesitant people to get their shots. Unlike vaccines that are either based on mRNA technology or, like the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, a viral vector formulation, Novavax’s vaccine is similar to ones that have been used for decades for flu, hepatitis or cervical cancer. Some 1,929 Slovaks have registered for the shot as of March 10.
• Korean boy band BTS performed live in Seoul for the first time in over two years, the New York Times reported. The multibillion-dollar act performed live in Los Angeles in November, but for most of the pandemic it has been live streaming instead. It set a Guinness world record for most viewers of a livestreamed event.
• Australian virologists have found a drug-resistant mutation in the COVID virus associated with the monoclonal antibody sotrovimab and say it could spread in the community, the Guardian reported. The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday and are based on an analysis of the first 100 patients in western Sydney during the delta outbreak in 2021 to be given the treatment. The whole genome sequence of the virus analyzed from the patients before and after sotrovimab treatment uncovered mutations in a few patients that “made the drug effectively inactive,” said Dr. Rebecca Rockett from the University of Sydney’s Institute for Infectious Diseases.
Here’s what the numbers say
The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 toped 451.9 million on Thursday, while the death toll rose above 6.02 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. leads the world with 79.4 million cases and 963,869 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 216.3 million people living in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, equal to 65.2% of the population. But just 95.4 million are boosted, equal to 44.1% of the vaccinated population.
