As we await a potential announcement on whether the Food and Drug Administration will authorize a second booster shot of the Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines for people aged 50 or more years — which could come as soon as Tuesday, according to media reports — President Biden today announced a proposed fiscal year 2023 budget that includes a historic $88.2 billion request of funding for pandemic preparedness and biodefense.
“We must increase and sustain our investments across the U.S. government to better prevent, detect and respond to pandemics, and to build a world safe and secure from biological threats,” the White House said.
The budget asks for:
- $40 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response to invest in advanced development and manufacturing of countermeasures for high-priority threats and viral families, including vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.
- $28 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to enhance public health system infrastructure, domestic and global threat surveillance, public health workforce development, public health laboratory capacity and global health security.
- $12.1 billion for the National Institutes of Health for research and development of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics against high-priority biological threats, including safe and secure laboratory capacity and clinical trial infrastructure.
- $1.6 billion for the FDA to expand and modernize regulatory capacity, information technology and laboratory infrastructure to support the evaluation of medical countermeasures.
- $1.8 billion to enable the CDC and NIH to expand efforts to strengthen biosafety and biosecurity practices domestically and globally.
- $6.5 billion in funding for the State Department Agency for International Development to invest in pandemic and biological threat preparedness globally. This amount includes $4.5 billion in seed funding to establish global, regional and local capacity through a new financial intermediary fund at the World Bank focused on global health security and pandemic preparedness.
It remains to be seen how much of this wish list will become reality.
Meanwhile, at a Wednesday press briefing, the administration was still calling for Congress to provide $22.5 billion in emergency funding so the federal government can carry out its plan to continue to fight COVID-19.
“I’d like to emphasize that if cases rise from the omicron variant or any other variant, we have the tools, vaccines, boosters, tests and therapeutics to be prepared. But continued investment in these tools so that they are readily available when we need them remains critical,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, M.D., MPH.
The government risks not having sufficient vaccine supply or testing capacity, that enough treatments are available and that shots are free and easy to access for all Americans in the future, officials said.
It’s a message the senior living and care industry is on board with, too — with the caveat that the money be used for the industry.
LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan earlier this month sent a letter to Senate and House leaders indicating that assisted living and other aging services providers “need additional relief to get through the public health emergency and its lasting aftereffects.” Specifically, she asked that Congress restore the $23 billion that, “according to the Congressional Research Service, was taken from the PRF for other coronavirus expenses, not for provider relief as intended.”
“Further, we request that these funds be targeted to aging services/long-term care providers,” Sloan wrote March 18.
Argentum also is among the groups recently calling for targeted financial relief for the industry from the federal government. In a letter to the White House last week, Argentum President and CEO James Balda said that with the rise in omicron subvariants accelerating and ongoing pandemic-related financial stress, now is the most crucial time for the administration to step up and help. He said the “pandemic, much less the crisis stage, is far from over” for the almost 2 million older adults in assisted living, memory care, independent living and continuing care retirement communities.
Let’s hope Congress hears the industry’s requests for relief in the short term and supports long-term funding for pandemic preparedness and biodefense, which could aid providers, too.
Lois A. Bowers is the editor of McKnight’s Senior Living.
