Unusual authorization plan for Covid vaccine for kids under 5 questioned

 The Food and Drug Administration’s willingness to consider authorizing a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for children under the age of 5 — without evidence yet that it would be protective — is raising concerns among some vaccine experts who fear the plan could backfire and undermine vaccine uptake in this group.

Pfizer and BioNTech confirmed Tuesday that they had been asked by the FDA to submit an application for the use of a two-dose vaccine in children 6 months to 4 years old. Data on a third shot would be submitted to regulators once they became available in the spring — ostensibly clearing the way for the agency to authorize a three-shot regimen for the youngest children who can get vaccinated. 

If the two-dose series is authorized by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, potentially sometime this month, parents who want to vaccinate children under 5 could begin to do so before Pfizer has proven that the vaccine is protective for this entire age group — something that doesn’t normally happen.

“It’s certainly a creative approach to trying to address the urgency that FDA and the White House is hearing from parents … for making these vaccines available for this younger age group,” said Jason Schwartz, an assistant professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health.

“But … the stakes are high and they’re never higher than for vaccines in this youngest age group, both for their effects on this vaccine and the effects on childhood vaccination and vaccine confidence generally.”

Pfizer announced before Christmas that in a clinical trial of children aged 2 to 4 years old, two doses of vaccine failed to generate antibody levels on par with those seen in people aged 16 to 25 after two shots. Paradoxically, two doses given to infants aged 6 months to 23 months did generate antibody levels similar to those seen in the 16- to 25-year-olds, levels that are deemed to equate with protection.

In both groups of little kids, the vaccines appeared to be safe and the side effect profile was tolerable. Side effects included fever and chills, which are not uncommon reactions to vaccines in early childhood. 

The companies decided to test whether adding a third dose would raise antibody levels to required levels. But the data from the modified trial aren’t expected until late March and the FDA appears to be unwilling to wait until then. A source told STAT that the agency’s independent vaccine expert panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, will meet Feb. 15 to review the data Pfizer is submitting with this application.

The idea of authorizing use of the first two doses while the third-dose data are pending is being framed as a way to allow parents eager to vaccinate children 4 and under to get a head start on the process, with a third dose to follow after review of the results of that part of the study.

None of the experts STAT spoke to for this article could recall a precedent for this approach. And several worried going down this path could erode willingness on the part of parents of young children to get them vaccinated. To date only about 20% of children aged 5 to 11 have received two doses of vaccine, according to CDC data.

“I don’t think authorizing two doses in children ages 2 to 4 years of age where effectiveness in this age group hasn’t been confirmed is going to convince the majority of parents to vaccinate their children,” said Norman Baylor, president and CEO of Biologics Consulting and a former head of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines. “If the vaccine in this age cohort is a three-dose vaccine, FDA should review the data from the three-dose series before authorizing the vaccine.”

In a poll released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 31% of parents of young children said they intend to have them vaccinated as soon as they are able. But 26% said they would not vaccinate children under the age of 5. A further 12% said they would only vaccinate their children if they were required to and 29% said they would take a “wait and see” approach.

Baylor said those results suggest following normal procedures would make more sense here. “The question is, where’s the fire?” he asked. “I think we can take a little time. If that third dose data is available in March, that’s not that long now.”

Schwartz has a vaccinated 8-year-old and a 2-year-old who was home from day care on Tuesday because a teacher tested positive for Covid. He suggested expediting the process for children 4 and younger will be welcomed by some parents, but won’t lead to a flood of vaccinated kids.

“To the extent that this is moving the clock ahead just by a few months, I think we should recognize that it will be a pretty limited number of families who will jump at this opportunity in the way that I have and in the way I probably would, depending on what the data look like,” he said.

Saad Omer, director of Yale University’s Institute for Global Health, said he understands concerns about what pursuing this plan could do to vaccine hesitancy among parents who aren’t convinced of the need to vaccinate children against Covid or the safety of the vaccines. But at this point, his expectations for vaccine uptake rates in children are not high.

“Childhood immunization coverage [for Covid] isn’t stellar anyway,” Omer said. “I don’t think this will particularly dent it.” 

Likewise, he wasn’t too concerned that this approach will provide ammunition to the burgeoning anti-vaccination movement. “The bottom line is contrarians will do what they do. That’s their schtick,” Omer said. “And anti-vaccine people will do what they always do.”

Malia Jones, an epidemiologist who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and who specializes in vaccine hesitancy, said it has been clear for a while that getting children vaccinated against Covid is going to be an uphill battle. She worries that the low level of confidence in Covid vaccines for children will erode parental support for other vaccines. “This is the thing that keeps me up at night,” she said.

“I think already it’s kind of a disaster for vaccine uptake in kids,” Jones said of the prospects for persuading parents to vaccinate their children against Covid and whether the FDA’s approach here will influence them. “Is it throwing gasoline on a dumpster fire? Maybe. But it was already a dumpster fire.”

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/02/worry-vaccinating-under-5-could-backfire/

Biden once pledged to ‘cure cancer.’ His new approach is far more modest

 President Biden has been pledging to “cure” cancer for the past six years, beginning with his moonshot effort as vice president. He re-upped that pledge on the campaign trail, too, vowing again: “If I’m elected, we’re going to cure cancer.”

This time, though, Biden’s no longer promising a “cure.”

Instead, Biden will relaunch the White House Cancer Moonshot on Wednesday with an ambitious but noticeably more measured goal: Cutting the cancer death rate in half within 25 years. In substance and tone, the effort is modest when compared to 2016. Most notably, it doesn’t call for any new research funding — a key pillar of the Obama-era push.

Instead, the program will create a White House “Cancer Cabinet” geared toward expanding cancer screening and prevention, improving the experiences of cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers, and addressing racial disparities in cancer outcomes.

The effort represents Biden’s first attempt, as president, to tackle one of his signature issues. Since his son Beau Biden’s death in 2015 from glioblastoma, a form of brain tumor, cancer has been a deeply ingrained part of the president’s political identity.

But the Cancer Moonshot redux also illustrates the limitations of what the White House can do without a flood of new research money, and amid looming uncertainty about Biden’s ability to confirm new leaders for key federal research agencies. The president’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, the agency that oversees cancer clinical trials and the approval of new drugs, is stalled on Capitol Hill. The White House hasn’t announced a replacement for Francis Collins, the longtime director of the National Institutes of Health who stepped down in December.

Biden’s signature science proposal is languishing on Capitol Hill, too: The creation of ARPA-H, a new research agency that Biden has said could “end cancer as we know it.”

“There is great value in a president giving the populace hope that science can lead to cures,” said Jill O’Donnell-Tormey, the CEO of the Cancer Research Institute, a nonprofit focused on cancer immunotherapies. “But I would say without funding for a research component, you’re not going to get over the goalpost.”

While they welcomed the announcement, other cancer research advocates echoed calls for new research funding, and acknowledged that without progress on other fronts, the moonshot’s impact may be limited.

“We hope that today’s event at the White House will serve as a catalyst for the administration to appoint permanent leadership at the NIH, [National Cancer Institute], and FDA,” as well as provide funding boosts to those agencies, said Jon Retzlaff, the chief policy officer for the American Association for Cancer Research.

The new effort does contain a number of measures that the White House can pursue without help from Congress and without new funding, including a major personnel move: The appointment of Danielle Carnival as White House cancer coordinator.

Carnival, a neuroscientist who served as the original moonshot’s policy director, also worked as vice president of the Biden Cancer Initiative, the nonprofit Biden founded after leaving the White House in 2017, and later as CEO of the advocacy group I Am ALS, the driving force behind a $500 million research bill Congress passed late last year.

The new moonshot will also include a renewed call for Americans to receive cancer screenings. The White House estimated that approximately 9.5 million were missed thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. It also will include efforts to expand HPV vaccinations, which help prevent cervical cancer, and the potential creation of diagnostics that can detect multiple cancers simultaneously, perhaps via an annual blood draw.

Perhaps most critically, it could once again galvanize the entire cancer research community, much like the 2016 effort and the more recent federal efforts surrounding Covid-19, said Elizabeth Jaffee, a physician and oncology professor at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins who advised the original Cancer Moonshot and sat on the Biden Cancer Initiative’s board.

When the pandemic began, she said, “we needed an organized group of researchers and an organized government coming together, and in nine months, we had a vaccine.”

“I don’t think in nine months, we’re going to have a cure for cancer,” she said. “I’m just trying to make the analogy: There’s a lot out there, but you have to mobilize it.”

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/02/biden-once-pledged-to-cure-cancer-his-new-approach-is-far-more-modest/

Gilead antiviral Veklury blew past sales estimates in late 2021 as omicron surged, vaccinations lagged

 Just when it looked like Gilead’s COVID-19 medicine Veklury was destined to be crowded out of the market by antibody treatments and antiviral pills, the omicron variant helped spark a surge in sales.

In the fourth quarter of last year, with a late boost in demand in December, Veklury rang (PDF) up $1.4 billion in sales, far exceeding the Wall Street consensus estimate of $864 million.

Gilead reported the figure Tuesday when it presented its fourth quarter and 2021 earnings. The strong quarter brought Veklury sales up to $5.6 billion for the year and helped push Gilead’s revenue figure to $27.3 billion in 2021, an 11% increase from 2020 that the company attributed almost entirely to Veklury.

“In the December/January time frame we’ve really seen Veklury play a critical role,” Johanna Mercier, Gilead’s chief commercial officer, said during the company’s fourth quarter earnings conference call.

Mercier credited Veklury’s resurgence to the ineffectiveness of antibody drugs, such as those produced by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, against omicron. While omicron has generally produced a milder form of the virus, it still has landed more in the hospital, boosting demand for Gilead’s infused drug.

“We’ve seen that Veklury sales truly track to hospitalizations,” Mercier said. “We’ve seen that again with the omicron surge. Despite the fact that omicron seemed to have a less severe impact, unfortunately the number of cases were much greater—just the pure, absolute number of hospitalizations went up.”

Late last month, the FDA expanded Veklury's use to those with COVID-19 who are not in the hospital. The nod provides doctors with a much-needed additional tool with which to combat omicron.

One miscalculation made by the company, it said, was assuming that vaccination rates would increase, thereby decreasing hospitalizations. Instead, a stabilization of the vaccination rate between 60 and 65% in the U.S. has helped sustain Veklury’s demand.

Gilead believes that as the pandemic shifts into an endemic stage and as antiviral pills become more readily available that hospitalizations will decline, limiting the need for Veklury. Still, the company is projecting 2022 sales for the antiviral at $2 billion.

Gilead’s chief medical officer Merdad Parsey believes that oral antivirals will come to be used at an earlier stage of the virus while Veklury’s niche will be at a later stage.

“Many people may progress and/or not get treated early enough and end up in the hospital,” Parsey said. “I do think there will be a role for both of them.”

As for Gilead’s bread-and-butter HIV treatments, their total sales were up 7% for the fourth quarter over the same period in 2020. Biktarvy’s sales jumped in the quarter by 22%, year over year, while sales for Truvada and Atripia declined by 58% and 29% respectively, year over year in the quarter, owing to their loss of exclusivity in the U.S. in late 2020.

https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/gilead-credits-veklury-s-strong-sales-to-omicron-s-surge-antiviral-pulled-1-4-billion-q4

Novo rejects U.S. insulin price hikes report, has 'nothing to hide'

 Novo Nordisk on Wednesday rejected allegations by a U.S. congressional investigative committee that it has engaged in manoeuvres to increase net prices on life-saving insulin in tandem with competitors on the U.S. market.

The report by the House Oversight Committee, the main investigative body of the U.S. House of Representatives, alleged that Novo had raised its insulin drug prices to the detriment of diabetes patients between 2001 and 2019.

Referring to Novo, Eli Lilly and Sanofi, which account for some 90% of the U.S. insulin market, the report released in December cited internal documents saying the three drugmakers had "intentionally and strategically raised their prices in lockstep."

An Eli Lilly spokesperson said at the time of the report that the company offers discounts to make its insulin affordable. A Sanofi spokesperson said the price of its insulin product Lantus had declined by almost 45% since 2012.

And on Wednesday, Novo's Chief Executive Lars Joergensen denied the Danish company had engaged in such activities.

"We have nothing to hide, we feel we have done business in the right way in the U.S," Joergensen said.

"Our net pricing is actually declining quite significantly," Jorgensen said, adding: "For quite some years pricing has been going down on insulin, not going up."

The report contained graphs showing how Novo has raised the price on its rapid-acting insulin NovoLog by 628% since 2001 by hiking it 28 times. The price rises occurred in almost perfect lockstep with rival Eli Lilly's Humalog insulin product.

Similarly, Novo raised its prices for its long-acting insulin Levemir drug 18 times, by a total of 360% between 2006 and 2019. This happened in tandem with Sanofi's price hikes on its Lantus product, the report said.

"As companies raised prices on their drugs, internal data shows that net prices - prices after accounting for all discounts and rebates - also increased for most of the drugs," the U.S. report stated.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-novo-rejects-u-insulin-143519827.html

Frustrated by corporate handout 'Groundhog Day'? Blame the American Rescue Plan

 Another wild year of corporate giveaways might have you feeling like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day,” but it shouldn’t be a surprise. We hate to say it, but we told you so.

During the first months of the pandemic, as the economy crashed and tax revenues plummeted, policymakers begged Congress to bail out state and local governments. Our research recommended that coronavirus relief funding come with a ban on states’ use of taxpayer dollars to poach jobs from each other, which wastes roughly $100 billion every year. Otherwise, Congress could end up underwriting every competitor in an economic race to the bottom.

Unfortunately, we were right. And we weren’t the only ones — researchers at Good Jobs First and the American Economic Liberties Project saw the same problem coming.

Since the passage of the American Rescue Plan (ARP), we’ve seen a surge in corporate handouts. The supersized deals that misuse taxpayer dollars are typically rushed through the approval process to limit transparency and prevent constructive discussion by wiser policymakers.

Let’s quickly review an (incomplete) list of recent giveaways:

There’s the combined $1.3 billion Ford Motor Company received from Tennessee and Kentucky and the $824 million General Motors got from Michigan. North Carolina – which gave out over $1.3 billion in 2021, including $846 million to Apple and $439 million to Toyota – just revealed another $228 million subsidy for Boom Supersonic.

So far the biggest spenders are Texas, which gave Samsung $1.2 billion; West Virginia, which gave Nucor Steel $1.7 billion; and Ohio, which just last week revealed during a Friday afternoon news dump that it wants to give Intel more than $2.1 billion.

We still don’t know how much Georgia promised Rivian, but one report indicates the number is “likely to be staggering.” Virginians are preparing to subsidize the Washington Football Team’s new stadium complex. Kansas policymakers are being pressured to approve nearly $2 billion for a mystery company. 

For the reader who looks at this list and only sees booming American economic growth, let us offer some points to consider: 

First, academic research shows that most subsidies don’t actually determine where a company locates or expands. Such decisions are based more on profitability fundamentals such as local workforces or access to suppliers and customers. It’s just financial common sense. 

Consider that North Carolina’s $846 million subsidy is less than a single day’s revenue for Apple. Michigan’s $824 million subsidy is barely three days’ revenue for GM. Major corporations don’t make mission-critical site selection decisions based on the potential for an additional day or two’s worth of revenues spread over decades. 

Second, on rare occasions when a subsidy does sway a company, it’s motivated a sub-optimal economic choice. Choosing a quick payout over the best place to do business means the company will do worse in the long term. That’s the opposite of what “economic development” is supposed to accomplish. 

Third, because subsidies give companies advantages over their competition or come with strings attached, they lead to less focus on serving customers. Taken all together, the wasted resources and political distractions reduce national economic growth.

After Congress passed ARP, we advised the Treasury Department that it should explicitly restrict state and local governments from treating relief funding as a $350 billion slush fund. The economic arms race between the states was bad enough to begin with.

Thankfully, the Treasury agreed. In its Final Rule released last month, it forbade the use of ARP funding for general economic development purposes.

States probably think they can thumb their nose at the Treasury, because 20 have challenged ARP’s restriction on using relief funds for general tax cuts. Federalists have a good argument that this attempt to commandeer state tax policy is an overreach of congressional power. But its application to economic development subsidies should be considered a separate issue and upheld by the courts. States’ attempts to sway corporate relocation and expansion decisions intrinsically affect interstate commerce, the regulation of which was constitutionally delegated to Congress.

Because Congress seems uninterested in solving the arms race, some state leaders are taking matters into their own hands. Under the Constitution’s Compacts Clause, they’re developing an interstate compact that would allow states to credibly commit to ending all subsidy programs simultaneously. If Congress wants to help, it could provide preemptive consent.

Meanwhile, legislators in New York, Illinois and Florida are considering bills that would ban the use of nondisclosure agreements that keep taxpayers – and even elected officials – from knowing key details about subsidy deals before they’re approved.

Just about every day brings news of another subsidy that will reduce, rather than improve, future economic growth. It’s a figurative Sisyphean hell not unlike the one in the iconic movie that’s become synonymous with Feb. 2. Our escape, like that of Bill Murray’s character, will require abandoning self-destructive selfishness and embracing cooperation.

Michael Farren is a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. John Mozena is president at The Center for Economic Accountability.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/592253-frustrated-by-a-corporate-handout-groundhog-day-blame-the-american-rescue

The tattered mission of Border Patrol

 Each year through the budgetary process, Congress allocates approximately $2 billion to Border Patrol. The funding is justified and defended by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which claims “DHS works to protect the American people and economy by preventing the illegal movement of people and contraband across U.S. borders while facilitating legitimate trade and travel.”

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the mission of the force is to, “Protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nation’s economic prosperity.”

Further, the core values include a dedication to “defending and upholding the Constitution of the United States.” Integrity is touted as the “cornerstone” of the work agents do, guided “by the highest ethical and moral principles” bringing “honor to ourselves and our agency.”

But since President Biden took office in January 2021, the unofficial mission of Border Patrol has shifted to processing millions of illegal immigrants. This takes important time away from essential frontline patrols and drug interdictions. As a consequence, Border Patrol has become detached from its stated mission and priorities.

On Oct. 4, 2021, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was reimplementing Title 42, which requires the immediate expulsion of single adults. 

“The Department of Homeland Security will continue to process individuals in accordance with the updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Title 42 Order. As part the United States’ COVID-19 mitigation efforts, DHS will continue to expel single adults and families encountered at the Southwest Border,” the Department of Homeland Security released in a statement.

Since then, the policy has hardly been enforced, and recent video footage obtained by Fox News shows thousands of single adult males being processed, put onto planes or buses and taken to cities across the country for release. Worse, Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed many of the men released have serious and violent criminal records. 

According to U.S. Code, “domestic transportation of unauthorized aliens, concealing or harboring unauthorized aliens, encouraging or inducing unauthorized aliens to enter the United States, and engaging in a conspiracy or aiding and abetting any of the preceding acts” is a federal crime. The federal government has engaged in the transport of countless illegal immigrants.

Tensions boiled over last week when agents openly confronted Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz about illegal immigration and how leadership is handling the situation. 

“Under this administration, in the last year, we’ve got the highest fentanyl deaths in the history of our country,” one agent said. “How many [fentanyl seizures] are we missing because we’re focusing on these families?”

“For evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Good men are doing nothing. You’re allowing illegal aliens to be dropped off in communities,” another added.

Ortiz shot back by claiming he shows up every day to “carry out the mission,” but did not clearly define what that mission is or address concerns about Biden’s border policy violating the law enforcement agency’s official mission.

“We continue to do the job and the mission that we signed up for. We all signed up for it, we all raised our hand,” Ortiz said. “Everyday I wake up and I’m committed to this organization.” 

Meanwhile, calls for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to step down are growing louder as he knowingly mandates the violation of U.S. immigration law. 

“He has lost the trust and confidence of the men and women of DHS law enforcement,” former Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said during a recent event at the Heritage Foundation. “I continue to speak with our frontline agents, and their anger, exhaustion, and frustration with this secretary are apparent. He has not only destroyed the most secure border in our lifetime—he has repeatedly lied to the American people about the cascading impacts to our country’s public safety, health, and national security.”

American taxpayers are owed a Border Patrol that lives up to its mission to protect the country — not one that simply processes law breakers through a system that ultimately places them into American communities. What’s happening at the border and the behavior of so-called leadership is anything but honorable. Worse, implementing President Biden’s open border agenda has forced agents to unwillingly violate their oaths and to disregard the law.

Katie Pavlich is the editor for Townhall.com and a Fox News contributor.

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/592382-pavlich-the-tattered-mission-of-border-patrol

Luján stroke jolts 50-50 Senate

 News of Sen. Ben Ray Luján’s (D-N.M.) stroke sent shockwaves through the Senate on Tuesday, underscoring the fragility of Democrats’ 50-50 majority.

Democrats are in the majority because they have 50 seats and the ability for Vice President Harris to break a tie. Luján’s absence leaves them at 49 seats until he returns, with his office saying he’s expected to make a full recovery.

“It's just a reminder that in a 50-50 Senate any unexpected development could be a challenge to our moving forward on an agenda that the Democratic caucus shares,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who said he was very optimistic that the 49-year-old Luján would make a full recovery.

Underscoring the narrow majority, Democrats on the Commerce Committee, which Luján is a member of, almost immediately yanked three nominations that were expected to get votes on Wednesday. An aide noted that the agenda was being "recalibrated to take into consideration the need for all Democratic votes in order to move certain nominees forward." 

The announcement appeared to catch senators off guard.

“Oh my god. I didn’t know that,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), asked by reporters about Luján, said it was the first time that he was hearing the news.

“Oh, my God. I’ll find out. I did not know that, wow, ” Tester said.

Democrats still technically outnumber GOP senators for now.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is in quarantine for the week because of COVID-19. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) also announced on Tuesday that he went into quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said that he expected Romney and Hoeven back next week. 

Luján’s office didn’t immediately respond to question about when he could return to the Capitol. But in a statement they said that Lujan—who at 49 is young by Senate terms—is “expected to make a full recovery.”

It’s not the first time that an absence has deprived Democrats of 50 votes and thrown the schedule into question.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) testing positive for the coronavirus, combined with the threat of a snowstorm, forced Schumer to delay, by a matter of days, votes on election-related legislation and an effort to change the legislative filibuster.

Democrats also delayed votes earlier this year after Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) was stuck in his car for roughly 27 hours as he tried to travel back to Washington, D.C., with the interstate at a standstill because of snow and ice.

Democrats are currently plowing through 20 nominees that Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has teed up for votes, which is expected to eat up the Senate floor for this week and next week.

Democrats can confirm Biden’s nominees without Lujan at the moment because of the GOP absences. If all GOP senators are present, they’ll need Republican help to confirm the nominees.

Other key pieces of the Democratic agenda are in limbo anyways, meaning they won’t be impacted by Luján’s absence.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) reiterated on Tuesday that the version of Build Back Better that passed the House is “dead.” Democratic leaders and the White House have been careful to sidestep committing to a demand from House progressives that they pass the bill by March 1.

Democrats are waiting for Biden to name his replacement to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court. He’s pledged to name his pick by the end of February but even once he does, it’s expected to take at least a month for the Senate to get to a final confirmation vote.

There are also bipartisan discussions happening on Russia sanctions and reforming the Electoral Count Act as well as a looming deadline to fund the government by Feb. 18.

But each of those, if deals come together, would likely get enough support that they could move through the Senate without Luján.

Schumer, speaking with reporters after the announcement, vowed that the Senate would stay on track.

“We look forward to his quick return to the Senate, and I believe the Senate will be able to carry forward with its business,” Schumer said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/592391-lujan-stroke-jolts-50-50-senate