His warning came as the White House said there could be up to 100 million infections from the virus later this year — and as President Joe Biden somberly ordered flags to half-staff to mark 1 million deaths.
WASHINGTON — White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha issued a dire warning Thursday that the U.S. will be increasingly vulnerable to the coronavirus this fall and winter if Congress doesn’t swiftly approve new funding for more vaccines and treatments.
Jha predicted that the next generation of vaccines, which are likely to be targeted at the currently prevailing omicron strain, “are going to provide a much, much higher degree of protection against the virus that we will encounter in the fall and winter.” But he warned that the U.S. is at risk of losing its place in line to other countries if Congress doesn’t act in the next several weeks.
His comments came after he and Biden addressed the second global COVID-19 vaccination summit and pressed for the international community not to get complacent in addressing the pandemic. The Food and Drug Administration is to meet in June to determine the specific strains of the virus that the fall vaccines will target, and Jha said it takes two to three months for manufacturers to develop them. Right now the U.S. has run out of federal COVID-19 response funding to place new orders of vaccines.
Jha, who took over the job of coordinating the federal government’s response to the virus a month ago, called the marking of 1 million American pandemic deaths a “somber” day.While acknowledging that “getting to zero is going to be a challenge,” Jha said most deaths from the virus now are preventable, with vaccinations and boosters, and with effective therapeutics, The challenge is often making sure that they are available to people when they need them.
“We have to have the US government still playing an active role,” he said. “That role will change over time. But right now that’s still critical.”
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