White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha on the rise in new variants

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• Judy Woodruff:

  With vaccinations, boosters and drugs, COVID is fortunately a far less deadly risk to most Americans today than it was earlier.

  But COVID still presents numerous problems, particularly for some of the most vulnerable Americans. The latest variants of the virus now account for more than half of all new infections in the U.S., and more than 300 people across the country are dying every day from COVID, on average. Moreover, researchers are still trying to understand the risk of getting long COVID from an infection.

  There are questions too about the Biden administration's approach to all of this.

  And for that and more, we turn to Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID response coordinator.

  Dr. Jha, welcome back to the "NewsHour."

  It almost seems that COVID has become background noise for so many, if not most Americans. It's clearly not that for you, though.

  Give us a sense of where this country stands right now in grappling with COVID.

• Dr. Ashish Jha, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator:

  Yes, so, Judy, thanks for having me back.

  I mean, I totally understand for why many people it's faded a bit into the background. We have been in emergency mode for two years. But the good news and the way we look at it here is that, obviously, we are in a much better place than where we were a year-and-a-half ago, when this president took office.

  We have built up a great supply of vaccines, and we have treatments and diagnostic tests. But the pandemic isn't over for many of the reasons you laid out, 300 Americans dying every day. It's the equivalent of 100,000 deaths a year. That's an enormous toll, hundreds of thousands of Americans getting infected every day.

  And then we're seeing these new subvariants. So we have got to keep up the work to make sure that we keep infections down, hospitalizations and deaths down.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, given the large number of subvariants that we are reading about, how well-protected are Americans right now in terms of vaccine and boosters?

• Dr. Ashish Jha:

  Yes, it's a fantastic question.

  Each new subvariant, the reason these subvariants become dominant is that they're able to do a good job of escaping more and more of our immunity. We have built up an immunity wall in our country, largely through vaccinations and boosting, but also through prior infections.

  And the good news is that the vaccines and boosting are preventing serious illness and death. And we can see that in the numbers, hundreds of thousands of infections, but deaths are still low. That said, we still have to keep going here at the — helping more Americans get vaccinated and boosted.

  A large proportion of Americans have not gotten their booster yet. And the — and because of these new subvariants, we still have to keep going in terms of developing new vaccines and making sure that Americans' immunity are keeping up with the virus that's evolving.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, is the guidance now, Dr. Jha, that Americans, all Americans are going to need a booster, another booster this fall?

• Dr. Ashish Jha:

  Yes, it's a great question.

  We're going to have to see, I mean, again, always guided by evidence on these things and guided by the FDA's direction. We should have a new vaccine, the first new vaccine really since the beginning of this pandemic, what should be a B.5 bivalent vaccine sometime in October or November.

  And then depending on how many vaccine doses we're able to acquire, and based on FDA and CDC guidance, we're going to probably want to make sure that certainly all high-risk Americans get it. Whether all Americans are able to get it, we will have to see what the data shows and how much vaccines we're able to buy.

• Judy Woodruff:

  The other thing we are reading is that these subvariants are evolving so quickly into so many different forms that the vaccination manufacturing — or the vaccine manufacturing companies are having a hard time keeping up with that

  Can you give us an understanding of where that stands?

• Dr. Ashish Jha:

  Yes, this is a challenge.

  I mean, the truth is that this virus is evolving quickly. Now, the good news is, is, the mRNA platform that is — that underlies Moderna and Pfizer vaccines can be retooled very quickly. But, ultimately, Judy, while we can make changes and try to keep up with the virus, the long-term victory against this virus is about building vaccines that are resistant to variants.

  That science is coming along. We're tracking that closely, doing everything we can to accelerate that. That's the long game. In the short to medium term, we have got to keep updating the vaccines and do our best to keep up with the virus.

• Judy Woodruff:

  We noticed, Dr. Jha, you said in recent days that, because Congress has not voted sufficient additional funding, there's not going to be enough money to provide sufficient vaccines for the rest of this year.

  Is that still the case?

• Dr. Ashish Jha:

  Yes, we have taken money from other critical programs to make sure we have enough resources to buy at least some vaccines. I'm confident we will have enough vaccines for all high-risk individuals.

  I want to make sure we have enough vaccines for every American who wants one. We do not have the resources for that. And we have — as I said, we have taken away from testing. We have taken away from domestic manufacturing. But there's not much — many other places we can go looking for dollars. And this is where we really — a place where we really do need Congress to step up and make sure that every American who wants a vaccine can get one this fall.

  That's going to be very hard to achieve unless Congress acts.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Dr. Jha, I'm sure you're aware there has been criticism of the administration.

  I want to quote just quickly from a piece in The Atlantic just within the last couple of weeks. It said that — I'm quoting — "Almost all government efforts," it said, "to curtail the coronavirus have evaporated."

  It went on to describe the Biden administration as having turned main responsibility for fighting the virus over to individuals, suggesting that the White House thinks this could be a political drag this fall in midterm elections.

• Dr. Ashish Jha:

  Well, that is certainly not the way I look at it.

  As a public health person, it's very clear to me that the role of the government is to make sure that the capabilities that we have developed, vaccines, treatments, diagnostic tests, are widely available to Americans. Our job also in government is to provide guidance.

  I have been very clear that testing is a really important way to control spread, as is masking in crowded indoor spaces, particularly in areas of high transmission. So we have been doing, I think, everything we can to both curtail transmission, infection, as well as obviously preventing serious illness and death.

  Obviously, public health has always been a partnership between both federal and state and local officials. And the individual policies around mask mandates are ones that local officials make. But, from a federal side, we are very, very focused on continuing to fight against this virus.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Last question, Dr. Jha, is about monkeypox.

  We know there are rising numbers of cases around the United States. The concern and the criticism has been that there's not enough testing, not enough vaccines that are going — that are going and available to the communities that are most vulnerable. How do you respond to that?

• Dr. Ashish Jha:

  Yes, so I would remind people of a couple of things, Judy.

  First of all, monkeypox is very different than COVID, what we have just been talking about. This is a virus that we have known about for 50 years. We do have treatments, vaccines and diagnostic tests. And we are one of the few countries that has really built up a stockpile of vaccines for monkeypox, actually largely built up for smallpox, but the vaccine also works against monkeypox.

  Right now, we just announced another 140,000 doses out to localities today. We're going to see in the days and weeks ahead tens, if not hundreds of thousands of more doses going out. We're working with a manufacturer to maximize supply and getting more vaccines here than anywhere else in the world.

  So we are very focused and also, by the way, working with the communities that are most affected, the gay and lesbian community, where a lot of this virus has been spreading. But we are going to stay very focused on ensuring that that community gets prioritized and gets vaccine, so that every American who one and needs one is able to get both testing and vaccines.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Dr. Ashish Jha, who is the White House coronavirus response coordinator.

  Dr. Jha, thank you very much.

• Dr. Ashish Jha:

  Thank you.