A revised proposal to waive international intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines shows good faith from developing countries seeking to ramp up immunization efforts, but it may not be enough to persuade holdout nations to come on board, legal and policy observers say.
June 3, 2021 6:04 AM By Brandon Lee and Alex Ruoff
The Biden administration is poised to announce which countries will get the first shipments of vaccines donated from the U.S.’s stockpile, amid the risk that more coronavirus variants will arise in countries lacking access to the vaccines, people familiar with the matter said.
The White House, which has faced pressure from a range of countries to share its vaccines, has settled on its plan and an announcement is imminent, according to the people, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.
The planned recipients werenât immediately disclosed. The U.S. has said itâll send at least some of its doses to the Covax initiative, the World Health Organizationâs effort to buy and distribute vaccines to low- and middle-income nations. The U.S. has been consulting with Covax on its plan, one official said.
A bipartisan Senate duo is pushing for legislation to support local governments that expand their ability to deal with mental health-care emergencies, hoping to shift the responsibility away from the police.
May 26, 2021 6:10 AM By Brandon Lee and Alex Ruoff
The National Institutes of Healthâs emerging technologies agency proposed by the Biden White House wonât detract from the rest of the agencyâs $43 billion research portfolio, but it may fold in some existing programs.
House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), whose spending panel has to sign off on President Joe Bidenâs request for a $6.5 billion agency called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, said yesterday she was âintrigued,â but emphasized the rest of the NIHâand 300,000 scientists who rely on its grantsâcanât suffer as a result.
May 17, 2021 6:03 AM By Brandon Lee
For a nation mired in a pandemic for more than a year, the biggest step toward a return to normal came suddenly, even to President Joe Biden.
After warning the country last Monday to stay vigilant amid the threat of coronavirus variants, the president found himself three days later striking a different tone, celebrating that the U.S. had already reached a sort of finish line.
Late Wednesday evening, Bidenâs White House learned from Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that vaccinated Americans could safely shed the face masks that have become a staple of their wardrobes in almost all occasions.