White House diverts funds to COVID vaccines

The Biden administration said Wednesday that insufficient funding is forcing it to divert more than $10 billion in coronavirus relief from test procurement and other efforts in order to secure the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments for some high-risk Americans.

The White House said it has been left with "no choice" but to cut back on orders of at-home rapid tests and personal protective equipment. It also is scaling back funding for research and development of new COVID-19 vaccines.

This means that the rapid-test companies will go through another round of layoffs. The small domestic industry first had to lay off employees last summer because availability of vaccines reduced the demand.

Then, to combat the Delta surge, the Biden administration pushed for more at-home rapid tests last fall. About 10 such companies were scrambling to expand capacity to meet the demand after scaling down.

The White House said such measures are meant to maintain some stockpiles of vaccines and treatments for Americans heading into the winter. It urged Congress to act to provide enough money to secure doses for all who might want or need them.

"The administration has to act because Congress won't," the White House said in a statement. "These trade-offs we are being forced to make because of Congress will have serious consequences on the development of next-generation vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, domestic vaccine production capacity, stockpiling of PPE and the procurement of tests and testing supplies for federally qualified and community health centers."

The White House's decision to divert funds to stockpile vaccines came right after Moderna announced on Wednesday that a modified mRNA vaccine — mRNA-1273.214 — has proved effective against Omicron in its clinical study.

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement that Moderna anticipates "more durable protection" with the updated mRNA vaccine and regards it "as our lead candidate for a Fall 2022 booster".

The preliminary data and analysis are being submitted to regulators "with the hope that the Omicron-containing bivalent booster will be available in the late summer", said Bancel.

But some experts worry that the virus is evolving so fast that it is outpacing attempts to modify vaccines, much like the flu vaccines that have been modestly successfully over the years in dealing the fast-mutating virus.

On Tuesday, advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted to authorize Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in adults, saying it would be beneficial for people 18 and older.

If the FDA approves the Novavax vaccine for emergency use, it will become the fourth COVID-19 vaccine to be used in the US.

Experts hope that the Novavax vaccine could sway people who are suspicious of and don't want to take the coronavirus vaccines developed with new mRNA technology by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

"We do have a problem with vaccine uptake that is very serious in the United States, and anything we can do to get people more comfortable to be able to accept these potentially lifesaving medical products is something that we feel we are compelled to do," FDA vaccine expert Peter Marks said during the committee's meeting.

While the government prepares to provide more vaccines, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that between December 2021 and May 2022, about 82.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine were discarded and accounted for 11 percent of doses the federal government distributed.

According to the CDC, Americans are more resistant to COVID-19 vaccines than people in other developed countries. Only 48.7 percent of Americans age 12 and over have been fully vaccinated and received at least one booster dose.

In comparison, 69.6 percent of people over the age of 12 have had a booster shot in Britain, 55.5 percent in Canada, and 62 percent of adults across the 27 European Union countries.

Besides low demand for vaccines, another reason for waste is how the coronavirus vaccines are packaged. They come in multidose vials. All the doses must be used within hours once the vials are opened or discarded.

In addition, the large number of doses that vaccine manufacturers require for a minimum order also contributed to such waste, some said.

CDC data show that CVS and Walmart were responsible for over a quarter of the discarded doses. Two states also threw away more than a quarter of their doses. Oklahoma tossed away 28 percent of about 4 million doses it received, and Alaska threw away 27 percent of 1 million doses it received.

Vaccine readiness might be necessary as the number of Americans infected by two newer Omicron subvariants has nearly doubled in one week, according to data compiled by the CDC.

The data showed that the subvariants known as BA.4 and BA.5 have grown to represent 13 percent of new coronavirus cases by June 4, up from 7.5 percent a week ago. At the beginning of May, the number was 1 percent. The death number has remained steady between 300 to 400 a day.

The fast-spreading two new subvariants suggest that they could become the dominant strains very quickly and bring another possible surge in cases, hospitalization and deaths.

The new subvariants are more common in the southern part of the United States. In states including Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, BA.4 and BA.5 account for more than 20 percent of new infections.

BA.4 and BA.5 were first detected in South Africa earlier in 2022. The data showed that they spread faster than the earlier subvariants of Omicron. The new subvariants led to a surge of cases in South Africa in April and May despite that more than 90 percent of the population had antibodies from vaccines, infections or both.