Biden to get updated Covid booster shot amid warnings over winter case surge and lack of funding
By Maegan Vazquez, CNNUpdated: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 15:35:29 GMTSource: CNNPresident Joe Biden is set to get his updated Covid-19 booster vaccine on Tuesday as federal health officials press their case fo
By Maegan Vazquez, CNNUpdated: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 15:35:29 GMT
Source: CNN
President Joe Biden is set to get his updated Covid-19 booster vaccine on Tuesday as federal health officials press their case for more pandemic response funding with the nation heading toward winter and a potential surge of cases.
Getting his own booster gives Biden another opportunity to promote the shot as his administration continues to grapple with the political challenges and public health hurdles posed by a slow uptake nationwide. The appointment comes a little less than two months before Congress' mid-December deadline to continue funding the federal government -- including federal Covid-19 efforts that the administration says Congress is already underfunding.
It also comes two weeks before Election Day in the midterm races, a consequential election that could reset the political realities for any of the administration's leftover ambitions to fund work related to the pandemic.
On Tuesday when he receives the vaccine, the President is expected to announce additional engagement efforts to help encourage and educate Americans about the updated booster. CNN first reported on Tuesday that the Department of Health and Human Services is debuting new ads aimed at increasing booster uptake. A White House official says Biden will also "be joined by business leaders as well as administration officials and discuss what his administration is doing to encourage more Americans to receive their updated Covid-19 shots."
It has been more than three months since Biden contracted Covid-19, which is the amount of time the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people may consider waiting before getting boosted. The President last received his second Covid vaccine booster shot on March 30.
The bivalent boosters target the original coronavirus strain as well as the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants. The shots are available for people ages 5 and up, as long as they have completed all primary doses in their vaccine series.
Biden's Tuesday afternoon appointment to get jabbed in front of rolling cameras once again, and urge fellow Americans to do the same, follows last week's data showing uptake of the updated booster started slow and has ramped up in recent weeks.
As of last week, the administration said a total of approximately 20 million Americans, which is less than 10% of the eligible population, had received it. That slow uptake may be cause for concern as the country heads toward a possible winter surge of Covid cases as well as a possible rise in influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases.
If more people in the US get their booster by the end of the year, about 90,000 Covid-19 deaths could be prevented this fall and winter. But if booster vaccinations continue at their current pace, the nation could see a peak of more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths per day this winter, according to the study, published earlier this month by The Commonwealth Fund.
Lack of Covid funding sparks warnings
The Biden administration has been pushing for months for additional funding for the nation's Covid-19 response, but so far to no avail.
Congress passed a stopgap measure to fund the federal government through mid-December, but the legislation did not include funding related to coronavirus vaccines, testing or treatment requested by the White House.
Drugmaker Pfizer said last week that, as government contracts come to an end -- possibly by early next year -- its Covid-19 vaccine will be sold for $110 to $130 per dose.
And the White House's coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Ashish Jha, also expressed concerns earlier this month that Congress has not provided enough Covid-related funding to prepare for the winter, saying the US doesn't have an "adequate" number of Covid-19 tests with winter approaching.
"No doubt about it that our response has been hampered by that lack of funding," he added.
Jha added at the time that, despite those resources, the Covid-19 vaccine campaign was still limited due to a lack of funding.
"So Congress bears a lot of responsibility for the complexities of the moment we find ourselves in. You can't run any national response to a highly contagious and deadly virus without adequate funding from Congress," he said.
Jha on Tuesday warned that there could be "trouble" with child hospitalizations but said that doesn't need to be the case if Americans get their flu shot and the updated booster.
"We're seeing the rise of three viruses circulating at increasing levels: RSV, flu, influenza and Covid. The good news here is that we're not powerless against this. For two of them, we have very high quality vaccines, both influenza and Covid, so the first and most important thing people can do is go out and get vaccinated, because that will keep people kids, adults, everybody out of the hospital at very high rates," he said on CNN's "New Day."
He explained that the new coronavirus variants circulating are "incredibly immune evasive" but that he is "confident" the bivalent vaccine "will hold up."
"Our vaccines should do a good job of holding up against this new sub-variant. You know, where the virus goes -- this has been a highly kind of unpredictable virus. We've seen it evolve over time. And the good news is that we have, as the virus changes, we've been able to keep up. So the new vaccines keep up. I suspect that there may be another vaccine next fall, but we're getting into a tempo where, for the majority of people, it's going to be a once a year updated vaccine," Jha added.
Along with Biden's personal public effort to advocate for more Americans to get their updated Covid-19 booster, this week HHS is debuting new ads targeting specific communities that have had a slow uptake of the updated shots.
"The new television ads airing today send an urgent message to communities at high-risk of severe illness from Covid that the updated vaccine is the best tool we have against hospitalization and death," Sarah Lovenheim, HHS assistant secretary for public affairs, told CNN.
"These ads also reflect our commitment to equity in our Covid response and the need to redouble efforts to reach Black and Hispanic communities about the benefits of the updated vaccines," she said. "We have seen Covid infections increase in prior winters, and it does not have to be that way this year. We now have updated Covid-19 vaccines to protect you against the Omicron strain."
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