Biden to dump another $5BILLION of taxpayer cash into developing NEW COVID vaccines

The White House plans to devote $5billion to develop treatments and vaccines effective against the entire family of coronaviruses, not just Covid.

‘Project Next Gen’ is expected to be launched in the near future as a sequel to the Trump Administration’s ‘Operation Warp Speed’. The funding will be taken from money put aside by the Department of Health and Human Services for Covid tests and PPE.

Similar to the landmark project that lead to the quick development of the Moderna Covid vaccines, the government will work with private companies to fund and assist with research and development of the shots.

The goal is to develop a ‘Pan-Coronavirus’ vaccine, and treatments that will be able to withstand future threats from the family of viruses that includes Covid, SARS and MERS.

But, interest in the pandemic and the vaccines has greatly diminished, with some questioning why the funds would be spent this way. 

‘It’s been very clear to us that the market on this is moving very slowly,’ Dr Ashish Jhan, the White House’s Covid response coordinator told the Washington Post. 

‘There’s a lot that government can do, the administration can do, to speed up those tools … for the American people.’ 

The initiative will have three major goals. First, to create a vaccine against Covid that is effective at preventing infection from the virus.

This was the goal of the initial Covid vaccines, launched in late 2020 partly assisted by Operation Warp Speed.

At first, the shots could drop the risk of Covid infection by around 90 percent. But, this greatly fell after the eruption of the Omicron variant in late 2021.

The current set of bivalent Covid vaccines are tailored to Omicron, but still are not particularly effective at preventing infection or transmission.

Biden officials are also hoping their injection of case could fuel the development of monoclonal antibodies that remain effective against all strains of the virus.

Many drugs of this class received early emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fight the virus. It was the main tool used in many American hospitals.

But like the vaccines, these drugs’ effectiveness significantly fell once Omicron emerged. They have now been removed as treatments for the virus.

The most lofty of the trio of goals is to develop a vaccine effective against all types of coronaviruses.

This would not just include Covid, but both previous and future versions of it that may erupt.

Over the past three decades, three major coronavirus outbreaks have emerged across the world.

This story is still developing