Democratic and Republican senators consider slashing as much as $5 billion in funding for the global vaccination effort from an emerging aid package — aid central to President Biden’s strategy to reduce vaccine disparities and mitigate the impact of the next coronavirus strain to limit.
On Monday, the Senate will continue to try to resolve a battle to resolve a broader emergency coronavirus response package by slimming it down to $10 billion from $15.6 billion. It was not clear whether the narrower bill would gain the votes to pass in both houses of Congress.
Although access to vaccines has gradually expanded around the world, administering the injections remains a challenge for a myriad of reasons. In many low-income countries, only about 15 percent of the population has received at least one vaccine dose, compared to about 80 percent of the population in many middle- and high-income countries, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.
Hence the need for urgent additional financial assistance, said Gayle Smith, a former State Department coordinator for global Covid response and health security. Stopping aid, she said, could “be a signal that the United States more or less thinks the pandemic is under control.” And while $5 billion is a significant amount, she said, it’s far less than the “double-digit trillions this pandemic has cost the world.”
It’s not just about saving lives abroad. Uncontrolled outbreaks can create more dangerous virus variants, as happened with Omicron, prolonging the pandemic and further damaging the global economy. “Our goal should be – not just the US but every country in the world – to end this as soon as possible so that we, number 1, minimize the risk of new variants,” said Ms Smith.
The United States has been leading the global response to pandemic, Ms Smith said, allocating the $11 billion effort as part of the US bailout plan passed last year. The country has also donated hundreds of millions of vaccine doses through the global Covax initiative and pledged many more.
According to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the $4 billion the United States spent on Covax in the past fiscal year accounted for 36 percent of the initiative’s budget.
When asked at a White House news conference Thursday whether Biden would sign or veto a bill that would not include significant international aid, Kate Bedingfield, the communications director, said the president had been clear about the importance of global financing efforts.
“Right now, countries are actually reducing our doses because they don’t have the infrastructure to take our life-saving vaccines,” said Ms Bedingfield. “Financing will obviously help to solve this problem.”
The aid would also go to other necessities, including protective clothing and Covid treatments. Republicans have said they will support the aid but have demanded that it be paid for by reusing money previously approved by Congress during the pandemic.
Public health experts worry that wealthier countries will leave other countries behind if they move to the third and fourth vaccine doses. The World Health Organization is urging wealthier countries to share access to vaccines and therapies with the world’s more vulnerable populations.
“We can end the acute phase of #COVID19 this year, but only if we work together to eliminate inequalities in access to vaccines and other life-saving tools,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organization’s director general, in a video he posted on twitter on Tuesday.
Devi Sridhar, a professor and head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh, described the cut of the proposed package as a “big step back”.
“I’m afraid as we announce the end of the pandemic in Britain and the United States, we are forgetting that it is still wreaking havoc in other places, even if we don’t read about it in the headlines,” Professor Sridhar said.
The uncertainty over Covid funding comes as the vaccination campaign has stalled in the United States, where the total number of cases has now surpassed 80 million, according to a DailyExpertNews database. Daily vaccination rates have fallen to their lowest levels since vaccines became generally available to the public in early 2021.
About 32,730 people received their first injection this week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Booster shots are also declining, with only about 52,000 people getting their booster this week, compared to about a million people a week in early December, shortly after Omicron was discovered in the United States.