This Week in Congress

Congress is in Recess

The Senate returns on September 6 and the House on September 13.

Other Legislation and Happenings Around the Nation

Monkeypox

Statistics

Worldwide cases total 51,257. The US case count stands at 18,989.

Decline in Cases

This week WHO stated that the slowdown in monkeypox cases has boosted confidence that the outbreak can be eliminated in Europe. Despite limited vaccine supplies, many European countries — including France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom — have seen sustained week-to-week declines in new infections. “We believe we can eliminate sustained human-to-human transmission of monkeypox in the region,” Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said. “To move towards elimination in our region, we need to urgently step up our efforts.” Europe, which has confirmed more than 22,000 monkeypox cases (more than a third of the global tally), has so far authorized one monkeypox vaccine, but the supply is limited worldwide. There are early signs that rates of new infections are also slowing in some major U.S. cities, especially New York City, Chicago and San Francisco. The US recorded a daily average of 337 new cases last week, down about 25 percent from two weeks earlier. “The rate of rise is lower, but we are still seeing increases, and we are of course a very diverse country and things are not even across the country,” CDC Director Walensky stated.

Texas reports First U.S. monkeypox death

In what appears to be the first fatal case in the U.S. of the virus, this week Texas health officials reported the death of a person with monkeypox. The case is under investigation to determine how monkeypox may have factored into the person’s death, but state health officials did say the unidentified adult was a resident of Houston and was “severely immunocompromised.” To date there have been 15 fatalities reported globally.

NCSD letter

On August 31, 2022, the NCSD sent a letter to the Dawn O’Connell Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Department of Health and Human Services, to clarify that Disease Intervention Specialist funding, provided in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, can be used, not only for COVID but for other outbreaks of infectious diseases, including monkeypox. The letter can be found here.

American Life Expectancy

Life expectancy for Americans born in 2021 is just 76.1 years, a 6.6-year decline over two years. That’s the lowest since 1966 and the steepest decline in almost 100 years. It’s astonishing to people who closely follow these data, prompting comparisons to the drop after another pandemic: the Spanish Flu of 1918. “It’s a ridiculous decline,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. COVID-19 took most of the blame, but drug overdoses and accidents also contributed. And American Indian and Alaskan Native people were the ones who experienced the precipitous drop in life expectancy that rivals the overall plunge after the Spanish Flu, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years since 2019.

COVID-19

On August 31, the FDA authorized Covid booster shots from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that are capable of generating protection against the coronavirus strains circulating most widely in the U.S. Shots could be in arms as soon as Labor Day, pending an endorsement from the CDC which is expected to vote this week on whether to recommend the boosters. The Biden administration expects to run out of federal funding to buy and distribute COVID-19 vaccines as soon as January, necessitating a shift to the private sector. The federal health department convened a meeting earlier this week with more than 100 representatives from state and local governments, insurers, health care providers and pharmaceutical companies to discuss how to transition vaccines and therapeutics for the disease to the commercial market.

Abortion

• Michigan, August 31: The Michigan Board of State Canvassers deadlocked 2-2, along party lines, on whether an abortion-rights amendment can be included on the November ballot, blocking certification of the measure. The bipartisan panel’s vote comes after abortion-rights activists gathered more than 750,000 signatures. The groups supporting the amendment will have to petition the state’s Supreme Court on whether voters will be able to decide if abortion remains legal in the state.

• New Mexico, September 1: New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham will earmark $10 million to set up a reproductive health clinic in a county that borders Texas. New Mexico is preparing for a possible increase of abortion seekers from nearby states that have restricted access in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Texas law heavily restricts abortions, while Arizona has a pre-Roe abortion ban that may be enforced, prompting many clinics in that State to halt procedures. “As more states move to restrict and prohibit access to reproductive care, New Mexico will continue to not only protect access to abortion, but to expand and strengthen reproductive health care throughout the state,” Grisham said.