personal finance | News roundup for March 16

Americans will lose covid treatment without funding from Congress

The US government will run out of supplies of covid-19 treatments known as monoclonal antibodies as soon as the end of May and will have to scale back plans to get more unless Congress provides more funds, the White House said Tuesday. Sounding the alarm over the depletion of funding for the US pandemic response, the White House said the government would also not have enough money to provide additional Covid-19 booster shots or variant-specific vaccines without a new shot. of cash.

The White House has requested $22.5 billion in immediate emergency funding to fight the pandemic, but, after objections from Republicans and Democrats, the money was withdrawn from the latest government funding bill approved by lawmakers last week.

“We need this money now,” a senior administration official told reporters in a conference call on Tuesday. Time is not on our side.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the government had planned to issue an order on March 25 for what it has probably been hundreds of thousands of doses of monoclonal treatments. That request would have to be scaled back or scrapped without new funding, the official said.

“We will likely run out of these treatments for our most vulnerable … Americans by the end of the year, if not sooner,” the official said. ‘No additional funds soon, thousands of patients could lose access to treatment and these companies will have little incentive to continue investing in the development and manufacture of these treatments.’