U.S. President Joe Biden on March 17 named public health expert Dr. Ashish Jha to replace White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients, who will leave his post in April, as the administration prepares for new COVID-19 variants and infection surges that could hit the country.
The U.S. government will run out of supplies of COVID-19 treatments known as monoclonal antibodies as soon as late May and will have to scale back plans to get more unless Congress provides more funding, the White House said on March 15.
The White House said on March 14 that the Omicron BA.2 sub-variant of COVID-19 had been circulating in the United States for some time, with roughly 35,000 cases at the moment, and more money was needed to help fight it.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on March 3 said some 93 percent of the U.S. population live in locations where COVID-19 levels are low enough that people do not need to wear masks indoors.
The U.S. military said on March 2 it is no longer requiring masks indoors at the Pentagon after new COVID-19 guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
U.S. health officials said on February 16 they are preparing for the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic as Omicron-related cases decline, including updating CDC guidance on mask-wearing and shoring up U.S. testing capacity.
The Biden administration is seeking $30 billion in additional funds from Congress to fight the COVID-19 pandemic to bolster vaccines, treatments, testing supply and research, according to sources familiar with the matter.
After allegations of bullying became public, Dr. Eric Lander – the director of the federal government’s Office of Science and Technology Policy – resigned from his executive branch role.
President Joe Biden on Feb. 2 announced plans to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years, part of an effort to revive the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative to speed research and make more treatments available.
The United States government procured more than 100 million additional COVID-19 tests from testmaker iHealth Lab Inc. as part of the White House’s plan to distribute 500 million free at-home tests across the country, the Department of Defense said Jan. 28.
