White House prepares to ration vaccines as Covid funding impasse looms

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Fri, 2022-05-13 16:36 — mike kraft

White House prepares to ration vaccines as Covid funding impasse looms The government’s funds are running out. Tough decisions may soon present themselves. POLITICO

A painful and foreboding reality is setting in for the White House as it enters a potentially dangerous stretch of the Covid fight: It may soon need to run its sprawling pandemic response on a shoestring budget.

Just two months after the administration unveiled a nearly 100-page roadmap out of the crisis, doubts are growing about Congress’ willingness to fund the nation’s fight. It has forced Biden officials to debate deep cuts to their Covid operation and game out ways to keep the federal effort afloat on a month-by-month basis.

Among the sacrifices being weighed are limiting access to its next generation of vaccines to only the highest-risk Americans — a rationing that would have been unthinkable just a year ago, when the White House touted the development and widespread availability of vaccines as the clearest way out of the pandemic.

But as the government’s cash reserves dwindle, officials are increasingly concluding that these types of difficult choices will soon have to be made. And they are quietly preparing to shift responsibility for other key parts of the pandemic response to the private sector as early as 2023.

“There’s a great deal of concern that we’re going to be caught shorthanded,” said one person familiar with the discussions. “On the face of it, it’s absurd.”

The contingency planning is aimed at preserving the bare-minimum tools needed to protect against the virus this year, federal officials and others familiar with the discussions said. But many of those decisions still hinge on Congress authorizing $10 billion in new Covid spending, a prospect that remains uncertain in the face of GOP opposition.

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