Biden goes global on Covid-19

By Adam Cancryn and Sarah Owermohle

With Carmen Paun, Alice Miranda Ollstein and Katherine Ellen Foley

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— The White House will commit to donating another 500 million vaccines to foreign countries, as part of today's global Covid-19 summit.

— Top House Democrats are refusing to abandon their signature drug pricing plan, betting that opponents within their party will fold under pressure.

— Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is walking back his harsh evaluation of the FDA's booster concerns.

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BIDEN GOES GLOBAL ON COVID-19 — The White House is branding its global Covid-19 summit today with an ambitious (if somewhat wordy) motto: To make the event the “deliberate beginning to the end of the pandemic.”

And after months of calls for the U.S. to assert a stronger role in the global response, President Joe Biden will kick off the virtual meeting by announcing plans to buy another 500 million vaccines to share with the world's poorest countries, POLITICO's Carmen Paun reports.

The purchase, detailed by a senior administration official, will bring the nation's total commitment to 1.1 billion doses. That's a sum the administration is touting as the equivalent of three doses sent abroad for every one administered in the U.S. Yet the full contract first needs to be finalized, and it could take until September 2022 to distribute the entire amount.

That could nevertheless please lawmakers who have pushed the White House to accelerate donations. A bipartisan group of 37 House members led by Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) sent Biden a letter Tuesday, arguing the administration had so far not matched the "desperate urgency" of the world's needs.

Next September also happens to be the deadline Biden is setting to vaccinate 70 percent of the world's population — a target he'll ask the summit's participants to commit to today. About a third of people worldwide are estimated to be fully vaccinated, with poorer countries lagging well behind the U.S. and other wealthy nations.

What we're looking for: Details on how exactly Biden and other world leaders plan to close that gap, after months of insisting the U.S. can simultaneously manage the Covid-19 fight at home and abroad.

The four-hour summit will feature four sessions, with Biden chairing the first on vaccination. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus were also expected to speak, along with six other heads of states and international organizations.

USAID chief Samantha Power , Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will then each chair sessions focused on providing access to oxygen, testing and treatment; health security financing; and challenging leaders to take more action this fall toward ending the pandemic, respectively.

Harris separately met with Gates Foundation co-chair Melinda French Gates on Tuesday to discuss the global response and impact of Covid-19 on women in the workforce, Carmen reports.

One issue not expected to be featured high on the agenda: The intellectual property waiver Biden has backed at the World Trade Organization for vaccines.

More on the vaccine order: Pfizer and BioNTech will provide the 500 million additional doses at a "not-for-profit" price. The companies didn’t disclose the overall price tag, but an earlier order under the same terms cost the government $3.5 billion.

HOUSE LEADERS TO JAM DEM HOLDOUTS ON DRUG PRICING — Top House Democrats are still planning to include the party’s signature drug pricing plan in their forthcoming reconciliation package — even after four Democrats voted against it in committee last week.

That sets up a high-stakes showdown, with the survival of Biden's drug price ambitions riding on the holdouts caving under pressure, POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein reports.

Leadership, committee chairs, influential frontline members and progressive advocacy groups are now mobilizing to get Reps. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) and Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) on board, arguing they need the drug policy to fulfill their campaign promises to lower pharmaceutical costs.

The provision is also critical to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to pay for other top health priorities like expanding Medicaid in red states and covering dental, vision and hearing benefits in Medicare.

With the entire package now at risk of collapse, leadership’s patience with the Democratic dissenters is wearing thin.

But so far, the pressure campaign isn't working. Peters vowed not to back down, and is instead shopping his own narrower alternative to House and Senate moderates, including Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) (who told Biden this weekend she opposed the broader measure.)

The California Democrat — a top recipient of pharma donations who represents a district with thousands of industry jobs — said he estimates his bill will save about $200 billion compared to the roughly $700 billion generated by Democratic leaders' preferred approach.

POLIS SOFTENS FDA RHETORIC — Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday scaled back criticisms from last week but called for the agency to quickly authorize vaccines for children.

“It’s the worst of times and in some ways the most important of times for them and their work. I want to thank the FDA for understanding that we are in a pandemic and that they need to move quicker than usual,” he said during a press conference after his earlier comments — when he accused FDA of living in an “ivory tower” and moving too slowly on booster shots — were raised.

But he isn’t slowing down his press for speedy vaccine decisions. “They have the data now” on children 5-11 years old, he said. “They need to review that data expeditiously, meaning look through it, schedule the meetings quicker. A difference of a few weeks can save lives.”

WANTED: MORE WHITE HOUSE COVID MONEY — The White House is burning through money trying to keep Covid-19 out of its workplace – and it’s hoping Democrats in Congress will bail it out.

Tucked into Tuesday’s House continuing resolution is a vague $60 million allocation for White House “salaries and expenses.” A Democratic appropriations spokesperson told PULSE the provision is a response to OMB’s request earlier this month for funding partly to “maintain core operations and support additional activities including Covid-19 management and testing,” a Democratic appropriations spokesperson told PULSE.

OMB warned at the time that without the provision it wouldn’t have enough money to “maintain additional operating requirements for responding to the Covid-19 pandemic,” among other in-house operations.

An OMB spokesperson declined to elaborate on what exactly those operating requirements are (if you’ve got details, send us a note). But whatever they are, they may have to wait — the stopgap measure isn’t expected to survive the Senate.

GOLDEN GOOSE AWARDS COVID INNOVATIONS — Among winners of the annual awards — to be announced this afternoon — are BioNTech’s Katalin Karikó and University of Pennsylvania scientist Drew Weissman for their development of messenger RNA, the foundation of two Covid-19 vaccines. MD Anderson Cancer Center’s V. Craig Jordan also won for pioneering a class of receptor-targeting breast cancer therapies.

Background: The Golden Goose Awards were founded in 2012 to highlight federally funded work that may have been weird or obscure at the time but went on to change science. They started as a brainchild of Rep. Jim Cooper after another lawmaker, Sen. William Proximire, years earlier issued “Golden Fleece Awards” as a way to highlight wasteful government spending.

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BIOGEN SHOWCASES ALZHEIMER’S DRUG PIPELINE — Biogen on Wednesday touted its Aduhelm as the foundation for the development of diverse Alzheimer’s therapies — more protein-targeting drugs that skeptics argue might not be effective.

In a research and development day for investors on Wednesday, Biogen executives also discussed lecanemab, a monoclonal antibody that targets amyloid buildups. It received breakthrough therapy status from the FDA in June and is in Phase III trials. It’s in early trials for a therapy that targets tangles of tau — another hallmark symptom of Alzheimer’s disease.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis nominated Joseph Ladapo as the state’s new general surgeon, earning outrage from health groups who pointed to his record of questioning mask mandates and arguing Americans should “ learn to live with the virus” instead of masking and social distancing. Ladapo, a doctor, is currently an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Former White House Covid-19 Coordinator Deborah Birx is joining the advisory board for Real Time Medical Systems to lead analysis of infectious diseases detection.

American Clinical Laboratory Association President Julie Khani is leaving the post to lead government affairs for Hologic, a medical technology company. ACLA’s board is leading the search for a new president.

Eboné Carrington is joining Manatt Health as a managing director. She was previously the CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem.

The Biden administration plans to nominate Cameroonian virologist John Nkengasong to helm PEPFAR , The New York Times reported. Nkengasong is currently director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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In a New York Times op-ed, former CDC chief Tom Frieden argues that the Biden administration needs to help develop a vaccine verification system.

The Biden administration is depending on rapid, at-home tests to curb the latest surge, but those tests are in short supply and manufacturers are struggling to ramp up production, AP News’ Matthew Perrone reports.

The country needs to prepare for a post-vaccination Covid-19 world in which the disease still spreads in a softer form like the annual flu, The Atlantic’s Katherine Wu writes.

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