Experts say U.S. Congressional delays in funding international COVID aid will prolong pandemic

Experts say US suspension of COVID aid will prolong pandemic LONDON (AP) — In the latest Senate package targeted at stopping the coronavirus, U.S. lawmakers dropped nearly all funding for curbing the virus beyond American borders, a move many health experts slammed as dangerously short-sighted. AP NEWS

...

They warn the suspension of COVID-19 aid for poorer countries could ultimately allow the kind of unchecked transmission needed for the next worrisome variant to emerge and unravel much of the progress achieved so far.

The U.S. has been the biggest contributor to the global pandemic response, delivering more than 500 million vaccines, and the lack of funding will be a major setback. The money has paid for numerous interventions, including a mass vaccination campaign in the Cameroonian capital that saw hundreds of thousands of people get their first dose, as well as the construction of a COVID-19 care facility in South Africa and the donation of 1,000 ventilators to that country.

Other U.S.-funded vaccination campaigns in dozens of countries, including Uganda, Zambia, Ivory Coast and Mali, could also come to a grinding halt. ...

J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, lamented that lawmakers were erring on the side of optimism about the pandemic precisely when another surge might be arriving.

“We’ve made that mistake several times in this pandemic. And we may be making that mistake again,” he said. In recent weeks, COVID-19 cases caused by the hugely infectious omicron subvariant BA.2 have surged across Europe, and American officials say they expect a U.S. spike soon. ....