By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -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 Tuesday.
Raising the alarm about depleted funding for the U.S. pandemic response, the White House said the government also would not have enough money to provide additional COVID-19 booster shots or variant-specific vaccines without a new injection of cash.
The White House has requested $22.5 billion in immediate emergency funding to fight the pandemic, but the money was removed from the latest government funding bill passed by lawmakers last week.
“We need this money now,” a senior administration official told reporters on a conference call. “Time is not on our side.”
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the government had planned to put in an order on March 25 for what would likely have been hundreds of thousands of doses of monoclonal treatments. That order would have to be scaled back or scrapped without new funds, the official said.
In addition, a program for medical providers to care for uninsured people will have to be scaled back in March and shuttered in April without additional funding, the White House said.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to sign the larger funding bill without the emergency pandemic relief on Tuesday afternoon at the White House. Republicans objected to the additional aid, arguing that it was not needed, while Democrats did not like how it was going to be distributed. Lawmakers plan to revisit the matter in separate legislation.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Susan Heavey and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Will Dunham)
