Omicron wave is wake-up call about need to vaccinate the world, say Hill Democrats, experts

Senior administration officials, public health experts and Democrats say that the omicron wave has illustrated gaps in the U.S. global coronavirus strategy, warning that low-income nations are particularly vulnerable to the virus and that the risk of another variant will remain elevated as long as billions of people are unvaccinated.“The assignment is incomplete,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who is leading a group of Democrats calling for $17 billion in additional funding for global vaccination delivery and infrastructure to immunize people in the developing world. … It’s a very good time to revisit the strategy and to plan for an extended period of several years where we’re going to be more at risk for the emergence of new variants.”Congressional Democrats are pushing the White House to immediately request billions of dollars earmarked for the global response as part of a supplemental funding package that could be sent to the Hill this week, warning that some coronavirus stimulus funds are nearly exhausted.“USAID — the primary U.S. agency leading global vaccination efforts and the global COVID-19 response — is a little over a month away from running out of money,” Krishnamoorthi, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other Democrats wrote in a letter sent to Biden on Tuesday and shared with The Post.White House officials declined questions about specific funding requests, saying they are still assessing the need for further investments.Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), vice chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, also signed the letter. Some public health experts also have argued that omicron could shift the pandemic toward a more manageable stage.Atul Gawande, a surgeon and author who was sworn in this month as USAID’s assistant administrator for global health, countered that the administration has envisioned multiple scenarios for the omicron wave and what comes next — none of them easy.Gawande said that “the best case is that omicron sweeps through the world quickly,” but that will still leave behind global “testing shortages, enormous demand for the oral antiviral medications that need to be made available, stress on masks, supplies and other critical elements, plus the demand not only for full vaccination but for boosters to roll out across the world.”“The worst case is that we have the next variant not be so mild and evade our tests and vaccines,” Gawande added, “almost like starting with an entirely new infection again.”The latest: Pfizer and BioNTech have begun testing an omicron-specific vaccine on adults.