BROADER BOOSTING TURNS UP SUPPLY PRESSURES — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Tuesday recommendation that people over 50 get another booster dose was expected. But what occurs next — like the possibility of another Covid-19 vaccine for all adults — could get dicey. What happened: The CDC said people over 50 and immunocompromised adults should get an additional dose of Moderna’s or Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine. Immunocompromised teens can also get another Pfizer booster. It’s “especially important” for people over 65 and people with underlying conditions, Director Rochelle Walensky said. The agency also recommended that people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and booster get an mRNA shot. Where it gets tricky: Biden officials say they have enough mRNA vaccines on hand for this wave of booster dosing, but they don’t have the funds for more supply. “What worries us is … if a different variant comes up and we need a variant-specific boost in a few months,” Dawn O'Connell, the Department of Health and Human Services' assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said during a press conference on Monday. “That would be quite a bit more expensive, and we don’t have those doses on hand nor do we currently have the funding to cover those doses.” White House spokesperson Kate Bedingfield reiterated the point Tuesday, telling reporters that if “the full population requires a fourth shot, we’re going to need additional funding.” Biden officials are publicly turning up the pressure on Congress, which dropped new Covid-19 funding from the omnibus package and hasn’t come up with a vehicle for new spending (as Republicans demand accounts of how earlier funds were spent). “When it comes to funding, timing matters,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Covid-19 Chief Science Officer David Kessler wrote in a New York Times op-ed Tuesday. “Manufacturers cannot turn the production of vaccines, treatments and tests on and off like a switch. Purchases have to be made months in advance if we want supplies to be available when we need them.” WHAT’S THE KID VACCINE DELAY? Moderna says it has gathered sufficient data to support its Covid-19 vaccine for use in the youngest children. But it may not be enough for regulators to green-light the shot for kids. Public health officials, pediatricians and infectious disease experts are split over whether the company’s trial results are sufficient for the Food and Drug Administration and its independent advisers or whether they’ll want to see data on a third dose as they did with Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine for children under 5, POLITICO’s Katherine Ellen Foley writes. The backdrop: Children under 5 make up about 3 percent of U.S. Covid cases and 0.1 percent of deaths, according to CDC data, but during Omicron, this age group was more likely to be hospitalized than older kids. Moderna said last week that two shots reduced symptomatic cases by 43.7 percent among children 6 months to 2 years old and by 35.7 percent in children 2 to 6. That’s below the 50 percent threshold the FDA set for adults, but Moderna officials said the regimen met a metric called immunobridging, meaning the pediatric doses produced the same immune response that’s been seen in young adults. Not everyone agrees. Immunogenicity alone might not be enough because it doesn’t guarantee better protection. The FDA might need to demand a higher standard, Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology & microbiology at the Baylor College of Medicine, told POLITICO. “Given the other data that surrounds it, I don't know that it's a slam dunk that the FDA will move forward in terms of releasing it for emergency use.” And the stakes are high. An FDA authorization that doesn’t show clear and strong benefits, especially for the youngest kids, could do more harm than good to vaccine confidence. “We have to do our job extremely well to make sure that we ensure that there is a very good evaluation of the safety and effectiveness so that when we make our recommendation, people will trust that recommendation,” Peter Marks, the head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told reporters Tuesday. BA.2 TAKEOVER — New CDC data released on Tuesday indicates that the BA.2 Omicron subvariant is now the dominant Covid-19 strain in the U.S., Krista reports . The subvariant accounted for more than 54 percent of new cases in the U.S. as of last week, an increase from 39 percent the week before. Why it matters: The BA.2 strain is more transmissible than Omicron, though nothing indicates it’s any more severe. It’s been driving the surge of cases in Europe, and though cases in the U.S. are still falling, along with deaths and hospitalizations rates, White House officials and public health experts agree that the government needs to be prepared if cases here reverse course. What’s next: Those new numbers won’t be lost on administration officials who have been pushing Congress to get behind their $22.5 billion request for more Covid-19 aid to shore up vaccine, treatment and testing supplies should another wave wash ashore.
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