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Tribune News Service
Tribune News Service
National
Josh Wingrove and Justin Sink

Biden faces winter COVID surge as funds, public interest dry up

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is urging a vaccination push as he braces for a winter wave of COVID-19 cases that could again drive up hospitalizations and deaths, but this time without a blank check to fight the surge.

Congressional Republicans have blocked more funding for vaccines and treatments, forcing the government to scrounge what money it can for those and to lean on the private sector for care. That’s raised questions about whether stocks of tests, vaccines and Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid treatment pills will last.

Biden, hampered by an increasingly shoestring budget, is enlisting U.S. businesses to elevate booster uptake as vaccine coverage dwindles, other treatments grow obsolete and low supplies run out.

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