“We have reached a new stage in our fight against COVID-19. We are making progress safely and getting back to our normal routines because of the important progress we have made as a nation, the determination of the American people and the work that we did to make tools to protect us widely available,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said to reporters Wednesday.
This plan was first presented Tuesday by President Biden in his State of the Union speech. It aims to balance efforts to reduce restrictions on the virus and increase efforts to combat future variants. Zients discussed the White House’s new playbook over the past weeks with reporters. He said that the administration was working with a variety of public health experts, local governments and agencies to complete the plan.
Many of the commitments in the document would allow federal agencies to continue responding to COVID-19 cases as they fall nationally and to pair them with requests to increase congressional funding to support the administration’s bolder ideas to protect against new variants.
The White House believes that expanding the nation’s Strategic National Stockpile so it includes at-home testing, antiviral medications, and masks to children would be a significant and costly shift in a federal reserve that was once primarily focused on purchasing emergency reserves for hospitals or first responders.
The stockpile was boosted partly by previous rounds of pandemic aid money. This allowed the federal plan for the distribution of some 400,000,000 free N95 respirators following the Omicron wave earlier in the year. Officials say that to increase the stockpile for another wave of the virus would require substantial purchases and planning, far beyond the current levels.
The requirements for meeting the pandemic needs of the public are much greater than that. They exceed three to four billion masks and respirators. That presents severe logistical challenges,” Jason Stear, stockpile official, said at a recent event hosted the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Near-term pledges also include a nationwide “test-to-treat initiative”, which would establish “one-stop” locations where Americans could get free COVID-19 antiviral medication. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is currently preparing updated guidance to prevent new outbreaks. The federal government, along with local Social Security offices, will “lead by example” and open up more hours for in-person appointments next month.
The White House stated that it will ask Congress for more funding and also request paid sick leave for COVID-19. This would allow the reintroduction of tax credits that businesses use to help them deal with the disease.
Although hospitalizations and cases have dropped sharply over the past weeks, many areas of the country are now able to get off their masks thanks to recently announced guidance from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the rate of new COVID-19 death has slowed to high levels across the nation.
By the CDC’s tally late last month, 75% of U.S. adults were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Around a third of those who are eligible for booster shots have not yet received the shot.
The Omicron variant is milder than the Delta’s, has protection from vaccines, and grows supplies of COVID-19 treatment, so the White House believes that the nation doesn’t need to let COVID-19 dictate how it lives.
“We are in a situation where we currently have approximately 68,000 cases. “We are moving in the right direction, which we hope, I believe, and we will get there,” stated Dr. Anthony Fauci who is the president’s chief medical advisor.
Federal health officials revealed details of the plan Wednesday at a press conference Wednesday at the White House. This marked a shift from months-long weekly briefings in which Fauci and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Wilensky joined Zients virtually.
Xavier Becerra (Health and Human Services Secretary) joined the group. He has had a less prominent role in the response to the pandemic than his predecessor under the Trump administration. Becerra’s Department completed an initiative called “H-CORE” earlier this year to absorb many Operation Warp Speed responsibilities of the Defense Department to purchase and distribute COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, and supplies.
Zients said, “It’s amazing to be back to our more regular routine and be doing these briefings in person.”
