Both Houses of Congress are in session this week for Committee business and floor voting.
The FEHBlog notes that the President’s nominee for Office of Management and Budget, acting Director Shalonda Young, and her designated replacement to serve as Deputy OMB Director, Nani Coloretti, will be attending their Senate confirmation hearings this week.
The current continuing resolution funding the federal goverment expires on February 18, 2022. The Hill reports that
Congressional negotiators are in danger of missing the Feb. 18 deadline for passing an omnibus package of the annual appropriations for fiscal 2022.
A shutdown is unlikely, but members of the Senate Appropriations Committee from both parties warn that if negotiators blow through the mid-February deadline, it increases the likelihood that Biden will have to settle for a yearlong stopgap funding measure to keep the government open.
At this point the budget ball is in the Senate’s hands. The Hill further states
Spokespeople for the two senior negotiators [at the Senate] declined to comment in detail on the talks.
“The negotiations are ongoing, and it remains the chairman’s goal to complete those negotiations by Feb. 18,” said Jay Tilton, a spokesman for Leahy.
Blair Taylor, a spokeswoman for Shelby, said, “We are working diligently to create a product that is palatable to everyone — bills that can advance through Congress and be signed into law by the president.”
From the Omicron front, the Wall Street Journal reports that
The Omicron variant spreads so quickly and generally causes such a mild form of illness among vaccinated populations that countries are tolerating greater Covid-19 outbreaks, willingly letting infections balloon to levels that not long ago would have been treated as public-health crises.
From different starting points, authorities in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific are moving in the same direction, offering a glimpse into a future in which Covid-19 becomes accepted as a fact of everyday life, like seasonal flu.
Health officials everywhere, many for the first time, are forgoing some of the sharpest tools they have to combat Omicron—even as infections soar. They are accepting the virus-like never before to minimize disruptions to economies, education, and everyday life.
At the moment, deaths and hospitalizations are at highs in many countries, and in some, hospitals are overwhelmed. But they are a much lower percentage of total cases than earlier waves. Vaccines have made the disease less deadly, and treatments hold a greater promise of recovery for those who are infected and get seriously ill.
That improving outlook, coupled with the reality that the measures taken to contain earlier surges of the virus don’t work as well against the more-contagious Omicron, is informing the decision by policymakers to abandon restrictive steps aimed at containment amid growing public fatigue over restrictions.
On a related note, Bloomberg tells us that
The omicron subvariant, BA.2, appears to be more contagious but data so far doesn’t show it’s more dangerous or that it evades protection from vaccines, said Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
At worst, the strain could slow down the decline in omicron infections in the U.S., Gottlieb, a Pfizer Inc. board member, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” The subvariant has been found in small numbers in about half of U.S. states.
“I don’t think it really changes the narrative,” he said. “I don’t think this is going to create a huge wave of infection.”
From the Covid pill front, ABC News informs us that “Promising COVID-19 antiviral pill, Paxlovid, in scarce supply, as doctors, patients compete for access.”
[Due to manufacturing issues,] [t]he current plan calls for 265,000 courses of treatment in January, gradually ramping up to 10 million by the end of June and 20 million by the end of September.
[However, s]carcity isn’t the only problem. Doctors and pharmacists told ABC News the process of obtaining the drug is opaque, even arbitrary.
In Nevada, for example, Paxlovid primarily goes to long-term care facilities like nursing homes. But in neighboring California, state officials use a complex formula that factors in rising case numbers with other risk factors. In the District of Columbia, a few Safeway grocery stores are the primary distributors, although city health officials have asked doctors to give priority to high-risk individuals.
Bloomberg adds that
New York City will provide free antiviral pills, home-delivered, to people who test positive and are at higher risk from Covid-19, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Sunday. * * * Both oral anti-viral medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — paxlovid from Pfizer Inc. and molnupiravir from Merck Inc. — will be available though in limited quantities, according the a City Hall press release. They will be delivered in partnership with Alto Pharmacy.