Biden administration could soon run out of money for Covid fight

Congress' decision to allocate just $15.6 billion toward the Covid response as part of its massive spending bill would severely restrict the Biden administration's preparations for the next surge, forcing it to postpone planned purchases of a range of therapeutics, four people briefed on the matter told POLITICO.

“It doesn’t add up,” said one of the people briefed on the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations. “This is as shortsighted as could be.”

The limited funding raises the likelihood that the White House will be left shorthanded should a new, dangerous variant emerge — with officials warning that the government's stockpile of key Covid treatments could be exhausted as early as May.

The administration initially planned to purchase another round of Covid vaccines to cover the possibility that Americans will need another booster shot, as well as buying more monoclonal antibody treatments and investing in new and existing antiviral pills that could help blunt another surge.

But purchasing more vaccines and antiviral pills from Pfizer alone is likely to cost around $10 billion overall, the people briefed on the matter said. That would leave the administration with little money for additional treatments.

"Funds are needed in March to secure additional supply in July," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. "You have to order them ahead so that you have them when they're needed."

At its current pace, the administration only has enough monoclonal antibody treatments on hand to last through May. Those treatments, which cost roughly $2,000 per dose, significantly cut the risk of death in severely ill patients.

The federal supply of preventive treatments for immunocompromised people will be exhausted by July, with officials anticipating that their stockpile of broader antiviral pills will run out by September.

The administration had also hoped to invest in the development of additional antiviral pills that patients can take to lower their risk after infection — moves that would allow it to pre-purchase doses before they are officially authorized, two of the people briefed on the matter said. But that, too, will need to be postponed until the government can secure additional funding.

The limited funding comes a week after the White House laid out a longer-term strategy for insulating the nation against future Covid waves, stressing at the time that its success relied on Congress authorizing far more spending.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra initially sought roughly $30 billion in additional Covid aid, a level that three people briefed on the matter said would cover vaccine and treatment purchases as well as some short-term needs.

But that amount was later reduced to $22.5 billion, before being cut to its current $15.6 billion level in the face of staunch opposition from Republicans, who have demanded that the administration first account for how it spent the hundreds of billions of dollars allocated toward the response over the past year.

“It is not yet clear why additional funding is needed,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Ut.) and 35 other Republicans wrote in a letter last week asking the administration for a detailed spending breakdown.

On Wednesday, it was House Democrats who were threatening to hold up the funding package over a plan to pay for the new Covid money by clawing back aid the administration originally allocated to states — further complicating the effort to secure additional funding for the response.

The White House, wary of blowing up a bipartisan government funding deal that would also deliver nearly $14 billion in urgent aid to Ukraine, has so far backed the broader package — even amid internal worries that it could leave them unprepared for a next surge that health officials inside and outside the administration view as inevitable.

Though cases have plummeted from their January peak, the U.S. is still averaging nearly 1,500 Covid deaths a day. And with the virus circulating worldwide, public health experts say it is likely to continue mutating. The U.S. endured three separate surges in 2021, including Delta's emergence in late summer and the winter Omicron wave.

The administration is already warning lawmakers it will soon need to come back with another funding request to keep the Covid response going, with Psaki calling the initial $15.6 billion an "urgent request" needed to pay for immediate needs.

In the meantime, officials will need to hold off on acquiring treatments that can take months to stockpile at scale. Ongoing research and preparedness efforts will also be in jeopardy, two of the people briefed on the matter said.

The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — led by Anthony Fauci and funding many of the Covid-19 studies — had requested $12 billion for coronavirus research in the 2023 fiscal year, they said. The agency would get $750 million to carry out that research under the current omnibus.

Without additional funding, NIAID studies on new coronavirus variants, treatments such as antivirals and other pandemic preparedness measures would run out around early summer, the two people said.