White House shifts COVID-19 funds due to stalemate on new money The White House said Wednesday it is cutting funds from some areas of its COVID-19 response in order to shift money to vaccines and treatments, given that new funding remains stalled in Congress.  … lvella The Hill

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In the shift, $5 billion will go towards buying updated vaccines for the fall, $4.9 billion will go towards buying an additional 10 million courses of the Pfizer treatment Paxlovid and $300 million will go to buying more monoclonal antibody treatments...

Gridlock could delay COVID funds until fall — or longer WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is headed for “a lot of unnecessary loss of life," the Biden administration says, if Congress fails to provide billions more dollars to brace for the pandemic’s next wave. AP NEWS

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N. Korea's low death count questioned amid COVID-19 outbreak SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Friday that nearly 10% of its 26 million people have fallen ill and 65 people have died amid its first COVID-19 outbreak, as outside experts question the validity of its reported fatalities and worry about a possible humanitarian crisis. AP NEWS

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Pro-Trump counties continue to suffer far higher COVID death tolls

Even with widely available vaccines and newly effective treatments, residents of counties that went heavily for Donald Trump in the last presidential election are more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than those that live in areas that went for President Biden. That's according to a newly-updated analysis from NPR, examining how partisanship and misinformation are shaping the pandemic.

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NPR examined COVID deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which most Americans could find a vaccine if they wanted one. Those living in counties that voted 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.26 times the death rate of those that went by the same margin for Biden. Counties with a higher share of Trump votes had even higher mortality rates.