Image by Grace Gay for Research Professional News
Two years after the pandemic started, what have we learned about funding the Covid fightback?
As Republicans and Democrats scrambled to get a $1.5 trillion appropriations bill over the finish line last week to keep federal spending going, one important piece of the omnibus bill ended up on the cutting room floor: billions in Covid-19 assistance funding.
For sure, there is much for the research world to celebrate: the bill still brings increases to the 2022 budgets of a number of acronyms that will be familiar to all those interested in research: the NIH, the CDC, the FDA and the NSF.
But the $15 billion Covid-19 relief package, principally intended to increase access to tests, vaccines and treatments, was dropped following intense disagreement over how to finance it.
Even if approved, it would have fallen short of projected needs: White House representatives said earlier this month that a minimum of $22.5bn was needed to meet critical demand for at-home testing kits; to continue uninterrupted supplies of monoclonal antibodies, vaccines and therapeutic treatments; and to maintain testing and treatment for people without health insurance.
In the week that saw the two-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring the pandemic, this was not a good look. House speaker Nancy Pelosi described the decision to drop the pandemic assistance package from the omnibus spending bill as “heartbreaking” and pledged to “continue to fight for urgently needed Covid assistance”.
It’s going to be an uphill battle.
Though legislators moved quickly to request the dropped Covid-19 funding through a separate bill—with a completely new financing structure that will likely appease the concerns of House Democrats—it is unlikely to pass Republican opposition in the Senate. They are set to filibuster it to death.
The issue that scuppered the package last week was a concession to Republicans concerned about government overspending. Democrat leaders proposed a funding mechanism that would claw back unspent pandemic assistance funding from 30 states. That met with swift objections from Democrat representatives in those states.
Some Republicans may wrongly believe the pandemic is no longer a public health emergency, but it is worth examining closely where money is being spent and looking equally closely at why allocated money is being left on the table. The federal government has so far spent $3.62tn in response to Covid-19, out of a total budget of $4.6tn, according to USAspending.gov.
That is a significant chunk of emergency assistance that has not yet been distributed by government agencies—including those involved in scientific research efforts to track and treat Covid. Although agencies such as the National Institutes of Health have tried to move quickly and streamline their processes for distributing grants, there is still frustration among scientists at the length of time it is taking for researchers to get their hands on much-needed cash.
It is remarkable that scientists have developed effective Covid-19 vaccines in just two years, but drug development and therapeutic research are lagging behind, says Julia Schaletzky, executive director of the Henry Wheeler Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases at the University of California, Berkeley.
In the early stages of the pandemic, Schaletzky felt so frustrated with the speed at which funding was reaching labs that were ready to turn their attention to Covid that she took matters into her own hands, raising $1 million from investors and awarding small seed grants.
Federal funding is now trickling down into labs, but it could have happened much faster, says Schaletzky.
“I don’t understand why the National Institutes of Health didn’t just tell researchers with existing NIH funding to use that money towards Covid-19 research in the beginning,” she says.
Schaletzky is also concerned that there is not sufficient cash available for early career researchers to experiment freely and innovate. “So much of science is just playing, following a hunch, but funders are so risk-averse,” she says. She argues that relatively small grants with low barriers to access could be much more impactful than giant grants awarded to established researchers with “slam-dunk” proposals.
In some cases, diagnostic tests for Covid-19 were developed in a matter of days but couldn’t be implemented at scale because of red tape. “There were six weeks, for example, where we couldn’t do diagnostic testing because we couldn’t swap the existing type of Q-tip used for the swab with another type of Q-tip,” says Schaletzky. “It was reported as a testing shortage, but it was really the inability to use another Q-tip. If you look at it like that, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It was incredibly frustrating.”
Early progress in therapeutics also hit roadblocks. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention classified Covid as a Biosafety Level 3 agent for research, meaning if researchers wanted to grow the virus or screen for new therapeutics, they needed to work in a BSL-3 lab. There are very few of these—even some huge companies with deep experience in developing drugs don’t have them.
Accelerating successes
Taking a broad view, the collective global research effort against Covid-19 has been remarkably successful, says Timothy Murphy, a leading pathogen researcher at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
“Clearly there are elements that could have been improved—for example, accelerating the development of diagnostic tests—but the overall effort was impressive,” says Murphy, who is also director of the Buffalo Clinical and Translational Science Institute and knows a bit about delivering improvements in medicine.
If this impressive sprint in fighting Covid-19 is to lead to meaningful improvement in the marathon of future research, a hard look at what has been done to date is in order.
Murphy sees three areas that should be prioritised for attention. The first is studying the root causes of the health inequities that led to the pandemic having a “particularly devastating impact on underserved and underresourced populations, people of colour and those experiencing poverty, and rural populations”.
The second is understanding long Covid, and the third is understanding why some people experience severe disease and some people mild disease from the same virus. “This will guide development of new treatments. This work will also teach us about the human immune system and how it interacts with a virus,” says Murphy.
As research experts start to look to what needs to be funded in future, though, it becomes even more important to understand why so much emergency funding for universities remains unspent. One expert told Research Professional News that the biggest problem with funds for universities to support students during the pandemic was confusion in the beginning over what money could be spent on, and institutions were very conservative about how they used the funds.
Universities may have to shake up how rapidly they can innovate in handing out money, for research and other tasks, even if it is unlikely that there will be another emergency package any time soon.
And finally…
Eric Lander resigned in disgrace from his role as the president’s science adviser last month after he was found to have bullied staff, but it seems all is still not well in the Office of Science and Technology Policy he used to head.
The Washington Post says that a whistleblower complaint filed last week with the Office of Special Counsel, as well as House and Senate committees, seeks damages for the poor treatment of multiple OSTP staff by Lander and other senior managers—some of whom are still employed by the White House. According to the newspaper, the complaint also alleges multiple ethics violations by Lander, which his lawyer and White House representatives swiftly denied.
Rachel Wallace, deputy counsel at the OSTP, is seeking an apology and her old job back through the whistleblower complaint. She was demoted from her position as general counsel by Lander. Wallace’s complaints about Lander’s conduct prompted the investigation that led to his departure. The investigation found Lander had engaged in unacceptable behaviour but did not find Wallace’s demotion unlawful.
“I’m still in exactly the same position I was when this all started,” Wallace told the paper. “That has not changed, and there are others who also were being retaliated against and their positions did not change. It is the same. Same people, same culture.”
Highlights from Research Professional News this week
The United States government has been urged to reinstate presidential-level bioethics advisers to help shape policy on areas from artificial intelligence to climate change and pandemics, reports Robin Bisson.
In our news roundup, Republican members of the House of Representatives science committee have raised further concerns over the conduct of senior leaders at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, including interim head Alondra Nelson.
From our Funding Insight section, you can take a look at schemes in Europe and beyond that aim to help researchers in danger.
In the news
The New York Times reports that Russian scientists are facing isolation following the invasion of Ukraine.
In The Washington Post, a whistleblower has alleged bullying and ethical lapses at the White House’s science office, a Yale professor’s viral list has pressured companies to pull out of Russia, and there are calls for fairer university admissions.
The Associated Press says that Yale University is striking the Sackler name from campus amid opioid outrage, a legislative fix could let the University of California, Berkeley, admit more students, voters have rejected a Georgia spaceport plan, and gene-edited beef cattle are being given regulatory clearance.
Science reports that Congress is poised to boost science funding and launch a health agency.
In Nature, a scientist falsely accused of hiding ties to China speaks out.
WebMD has a special report on Covid at two years.
The Los Angeles Times reports that lawmakers have unveiled a rescue effort to help the University of California, Berkeley, avoid enrolment cuts.
The week ahead
Monday
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine will hold a three-day virtual workshop exploring opportunities and best practices for collaboration between US and African universities.
The National Science Foundation hosts a virtual office hour on funding opportunities in biology.
Tuesday
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will discuss how to prepare for and respond to pandemics.
The National Science Foundation will host a webinar on its Strengthening American Infrastructure programme.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine will hold a conversation on access and inclusion issues for computational-based education and research.
Wednesday
The Senate Committee on Finance will examine prescription drug price inflation.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce will talk about 5G and ‘the next wireless frontier’.
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology will cover bioenergy research and development of fuels and chemicals.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine will host a virtual symposium on supporting women of color in tech, as well as a seminar on the use of technology in undergraduate science, technology, engineering and maths education.
Thursday
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will discuss the nomination of Kathryn Huff to become assistant secretary of energy in the Office of Nuclear Energy.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce will meet to discuss legislation that could encourage innovation and improve oversight in medicine.
The House Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing on the targeting of Black institutions, including recent bomb threats at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform will also examine federal support for HBCUs.
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology will discuss how to strengthen US leadership in setting technical standards.
Friday
The National Academy of Engineering will host a virtual workshop on supporting minorities in engineering education. Further workshops will take place on 30 March and 20 April.
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