WASHINGTON — President Biden’s coronavirus czar said Wednesday that the United States was woefully behind other nations in tracking potentially dangerous variants of the virus, and used the first White House public health briefing to issue a stark warning that Americans will remain vulnerable to the deadly pandemic unless Congress acts.
“We are 43rd in the world in genomic sequencing — totally unacceptable,” said Mr. Biden’s Covid-19 response coordinator, Jeffrey D. Zients, citing December data from the GISAID Initiative, which provides a global database of coronavirus genomes. In a brief interview later, he corrected himself, saying he had since learned that the United States was now behind 31 other nations.
Mr. Biden has repeatedly promised that his administration will conduct regular briefings and be transparent about its efforts to fight the virus, and Wednesday’s virtual meeting was an effort to make good on the president’s pledge. But it was troubled by technical difficulties, with the audio cutting out intermittently.
During the hourlong session, which drew 500 participants, Mr. Zients also warned that the federal government still faced shortages of personal protective gear and other essential supplies that it would not be able to buy if Congress did not pass Mr. Biden’s coronavirus relief plan. His pleas for more money were echoed by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The White House has dispatched Mr. Zients and other top officials to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they try to wrangle support for a sweeping $1.9 trillion package that would provide billions of dollars for vaccine distribution, schools, unemployment benefits and another round of direct payments. Top Democrats have said they hope to approve another package with bipartisan support.
But with several senators already balking at the scope and size of the package, Democrats are leaving open the possibility of using a legislative process, known as budget reconciliation, that would allow the legislation to become law with a simple majority rather than by the usual 60-vote threshold.
Scientists have warned that, with no robust system to identify genetic variations of the coronavirus, the United States is ill equipped to track dangerous new mutants, leaving health officials blind as they try to combat the grave threat.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and Mr. Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic, said the National Institutes of Health was working with the C.D.C. on research aimed at adapting vaccines so that they “have on the ability to neutralize these mutants.” One coronavirus variant, which has surged in Britain and burdened its hospitals with cases, has been increasingly detected in the United States. ...
