Consider This from NPR - New Variants. New Boosters. But So Far, No New COVID Spending From Congress

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

An omicron subvariant known as BA.2 could soon become the dominant form of the coronavirus in the United States. It's not more deadly, but it is more transmissible. At the same time, the Biden administration has authorized a second booster shot for people over 50 and other people vulnerable to infection. But against that backdrop, Congress has so far refused to authorize more COVID spending measures, which would fund the stockpiling of more vaccine doses and public health surveillance for emerging variants. NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin reports on the funding debate. NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff looks at another variant whose creation gives scientists insight into how COVID-19 variants change, and why.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all on the web at theschmidt.org. So yeah, about this new COVID sub-variant, it's called BA.2. Right now, BA.2 is becoming the majority of the virus population in the U.S. What that means is that we're going to see a bump in infections. Bill Hanage is an epidemiologist and a professor at Harvard. BA.2 is why case rates are inching back up in places like L.A. That COVID sub-variant spreading through L.A. County.

And Chicago. Over 20% of the cases in Midwestern states. And Chicago. Over 20% of the cases in Midwestern states. And Boston. BA.2 is now causing more than half of new cases in the Northeast, including here in Massachusetts. The expectation from public health officials is, just like in many European countries, BA.2 will soon become the dominant variant here. But right now it doesn't look like BA.2 is much more serious in terms of the disease it causes. Of course, protection from that disease depends on prior infection, vaccination, or both.

The thing is, protection, it wanes over time. So on Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized use of a second booster dose of Pfizer and Moderna for any American over the age of 50 or for certain people who are immunocompromised. That fourth dose, it can be given four months after an initial booster. However, if the science shows that fourth doses are needed for the general population later this year, we will not have the supply necessary to ensure shots are available free and easy to access for all Americans. That's Jeff Zients of the White House COVID Task Force. He issued a warning this past week. We should be securing additional supply right now. Many other countries are already doing so.

Consider this. A new coronavirus variant is on the rise, and so is global demand for more vaccines. But in the U.S., Congress hasn't agreed to pay for them yet. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, March 29th. This message comes from NPR sponsor, First Republic Bank, where everybody gets a personal banker who's reachable by phone, email, or text, and through First Republic's banking app. Learn more at firstrepublic.com. Member FDIC. Equal housing lender. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange

rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. BA.2 has been in the U.S. since around mid-December, and it's not a big concern right now, but CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told NPR this month that public health officials do expect cases to rise, just as they have in other countries overseas where BA.2 has already taken hold. With some waning immunity and with a decrease in prevention strategies and mitigation more opening up, they are starting to see a slight increase in cases, and we are carefully watching for that as well. Watching is one thing. Acting is another. to see a slight increase in cases, and we are carefully watching for that as well. Watching is one thing. Acting is another. And lately, the Biden administration has warned it can't act as aggressively against BA.2 and future variants without more funding from Congress.

We use those resources to monitor for variants, not just here, but across the globe, looking at how well our vaccines work over time in these long-term studies, and really the impact of long COVID, studies that we anticipate we will need to follow in for not just months, but years. To do all that, to stockpile vaccines and medicines, to keep certain treatment plans going, the White House told Congress it needed $22.5 billion. But as of Tuesday, lawmakers were still trying to agree on a plan to authorize that spending, even as nearly 700 people a day continue to die from COVID-19 in the U.S. And as NPR's Selena Simmons Duffin reports, some hospital officials across the

country are getting worried. How does all of this look from where Dr. David Zoss sits in Charleston, South Carolina? It's been a really difficult two years for hospitals. And I think this is one additional threat. Zoss is the chief clinical officer of the Medical University of South Carolina, a network of 14 safety net hospitals around the state. That means they treat a lot of low-income and uninsured patients. He says even in non-pandemic times, running a safety net hospital is a tight margin business. Add to that... The decreasing surgeries as well as the increasing costs from supply chain

and labor that have really challenged hospitals and the unpredictability, right, of the different COVID waves. One federal resource he says has been essential is the Provider Relief Fund. Until last week, it reimbursed hospitals and other health centers for testing and treatment of uninsured patients with COVID-19. We've had now $9.8 million for uninsured COVID patients that is now going away. He says they'll still provide the care. They're just not sure how they're going to pay for it. Even if you're not too concerned about hospital budgets or uninsured patients, you might want to think about the ripple effects. If someone who's uninsured is afraid to get tested for COVID-19

because of the risk of getting billed for it, they might just not get tested, even if they're sick. They might also keep going to work, maybe serving your food or driving your Uber. Zinzi Bailey, an epidemiologist at the University of Miami Medical School, says all of those hidden cases can drive more spread. Bigger searches, different variants. And, you know, we do not have this thing under control. Still, the funding remains stalled in Congress. Republicans have argued they want a more detailed accounting of where past pandemic spending has gone. The White House retorts that it's provided 385 pages worth of details to lawmakers.

They point to lots of other critical pandemic fighting tools that are in danger without more funding. For instance, the federal government wouldn't be able to buy more treatments or have enough free boosters for everyone, and it would be harder to track new variants or do research on next-generation vaccines, health officials warn the fund for the uninsured shutting down is just the beginning. That is NPR's Selina Simmons-Duffin. Speaking of tracking new forms of the coronavirus, BA.2 is not the only one out there that scientists are keeping an eye on.

There's another one, a mixture of the Omicron and Delta strains that some people are calling Deltacron. It's really rare, we're told, and in its current state, it seems unlikely to cause a problem. But its creation gives scientists insight into how and why the COVID-19 virus changes so quickly. Here's NPR's Michaelene Ducliffe. Officially, Scott Wynn is a bioinformatician at Washington, D.C.'s Public Health Laboratory. But he and a handful of other scientists around the world have an interesting side hobby. They are variant hunters. Wynn and his colleagues hunt for new coronavirus variants.

I think that's a pretty cool way to describe it. They searched through millions of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences looking to find mutants that could shift the course of the pandemic. For instance, back in November, one hunter found a very weird set of spike mutations coming from South Africa that became Omicron. Now Wynn has detected another intriguing variant. It was first found in France, but has also shown up in other parts of the world. It's a combination of Delta and Omicron. As one scientist put it, this variant has the head of Omicron stuck onto the body of Delta.

So the body of the virus is still Delta, but a good chunk of it is, of the spike at least, is Omicron stuck onto the body of Delta. So the body of the virus is still Delta, but a good chunk of it is of the spike, at least is Omicron. So yes, that's the best way to describe it. Yeah, that's just kind of remarkable. There's just some intrinsic imaginary sci-fi element to this. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. It kind of surprising in a way like, hey, the virus really could do this and do it very well as well. So how does the variant do this? How does it create this Frankenstein hybrid? Shishi Law is a bioinformatician at Helix. It's a genomics company that has also been hunting for new variants. She says for these variants to arise, a person had to be infected

with both Omicron and Delta at the same time. They were exposed in a short enough time frame that they have both of them in their system. Which means they were like infected twice, right? Yeah. And also, this is purely hypothetical, but Omicron happened around Christmas and New Year's where there are a lot of social gatherings. So you can imagine you go to one social gathering, maybe you got exposed to Delta, you go to a different social gathering, you got exposed to Omicron, and they both got into the same cell at one point, and then this happens. When two variants are inside the same cell at the same time, she says they can end up doing a special process in which one variant, when it's replicating, actually steals a chunk of genes from another variant. It's called recombination.

Here's the problem with recombination. Dr. Mike Ryan at the World Health Organization says this process is the reason coronavirus has evolved so quickly, and it's how dangerous strains of the flu are made. That is how we generate pandemics of influenza. It's through viral recombination. So we have to be very cautious. We have to watch these recombinant events very, very closely. Because although this Deltacron variant is rare, recombination is a process where the virus can take its most successful parts and combine them quickly into a super virus. And there are other Deltacrons out there. Shishin Rol and her colleagues have already found a handful in the U.S. That was NPR's Michaelene Ducliff.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Thank you.