Congress on Tuesday took steps to bolster America’s defenses against COVID-19 and prevent future pandemics by accelerating the pipeline of tests, treatments and vaccines and improving federal data collection.
The congressional action came as the White House accused lawmakers of being stingy with emergency cash needed to fund booster shots, testing and groundbreaking treatments for the current ongoing crisis.
The Senate Health Committee advanced the PREVENT Pandemics Act, 20-2, with Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Braun of Indiana voting against.
Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, Washington Democrat, and Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the panel’s senior Republican, say it would be a shame if Congress learned nothing from the crisis that has killed nearly 1 million Americans and upended the economy and social life.
“After all we have been through to get to where we are today, we owe it to everyone who has worked so hard to address the challenges of this pandemic to make sure we not only prepare in the immediate term for the next phase of this pandemic but that when the next public health crisis comes around — we are never in a situation like this again,” Mrs. Murray said.
She said the legislation combines ideas from 37 bills and over 30 lawmakers from both parties.
The bill would bolster domestic manufacturing of medical supplies, including high-grade masks, after health care workers and the public had to scramble early in the current pandemic to obtain gear.
It also calls for sustained investment in diagnostics. An early government test for the coronavirus was contaminated and produced unreliable results, and former President Donald Trump often complained the cupboards were bare when it came to testing supplies.
Mr. Burr said the legislation builds on efforts to produce vaccines in record time by giving the Food and Drug Administration the authority to accelerate its clinical trials and approve drugs on an emergency basis in cooperation with the private sector.
The legislation also directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop new data standards to make sure it is collecting complete data on public health threats and improving its ability to predict new threats. COVID-19 data that pours in from various states and counties are often incomplete or out-of-date.
Notably, the bill calls for an independent task force — modeled on the commission that probed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — to examine missteps in the COVID-19 response and issue recommendations.
“I first called for this in March 2020. I feel really strongly about it,” Mrs. Murray said.
The committee advanced the bill after a lengthy debate over amendments. It approved one from Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, that bolsters funding for the nurse corps to fill medical staff shortages
Yet it rejected a series of proposed changes from Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, who moved to keep the CDC out of economic issues like evictions and free up clinics to develop diagnostics without having to get through the FDA’s red tape.
He also wanted to remove Dr. Anthony Fauci and split his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases into three institutes that focus on allergies, infectious diseases and immunological diseases.
The bill moved closer to a floor vote even as the White House called on Congress to pass $22.5 billion in additional funding for the COVID-19 fight. Money for the virus fight was stripped from a broader government-funding package Congress passed last week.
The U.S. is recording around 30,000 cases per day, the lowest level since July, though President Biden says he needs more money to sustain the fight by procuring enough vaccines and ground-breaking treatments.
The administration said it would run out of monoclonal antibodies to ship to states by late May, and it would struggle to provide any variant-specific vaccines if one is needed.
The administration said it can maintain COVID-19 testing capacity through June, but manufacturing might falter if the government does not support it after that point.
A senior administration official said they would like to transition at some point to allowing private markets to handle purchases of testing and COVID-19 treatments, but the federal government has purchasing power that is required to deal with sudden surges, like the omicron wave.
“As we enter a new moment in the pandemic, Congress has not provided us with the funding we need to continue the COVID-19 response and minimize the pandemic’s impact to the nation and our economy,” a White House fact sheet said. “With cases rising abroad, scientific and medical experts have been clear that in the next couple of months there could be increasing cases of COVID-19 here in the U.S. as well. As the administration has warned, failure to fund these efforts now will have severe consequences as we will not be equipped to deal with a future surge. Waiting to provide funding once we’re in a surge will be too late.”
Mrs. Murray on Tuesday called on senators to pass the funding to defend the “hard-won progress we’ve made.”
On the Republican side, Mr. Burr said he supports additional funding but the administration needs to be forthcoming about how many vaccines and supplies are stored in inventory before it requests more cash.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration needs the money and will continue to highlight the potential impact on their states.
“I would note that there [are] a number of Republicans who won’t even return our phone calls about the impact of the lack of COVID-19 funding and how [it] will impact their constituents,” she said.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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