‘I Mean, We Need More Money’: An Exit Interview With the COVID Czar

Jeff Zients in his West Wing office in June 2021. Photo: Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images When the White House announced on March 17 that Jeff Zients would be leaving after 15 months in charge of the federal government’s pandemic response, it was widely interpreted as at least a partial acknowledgment that the country was reaching a new stage of its relationship with COVID-19.

I joined during the transition and then, in early December, I transitioned to leading the COVID-response efforts. There really wasn’t a plan to fight the virus. So we spent time putting together a plan so that, on day one, we could begin to execute. And from the beginning, the president said, “This is so critical; it’s the biggest problem the country faces.

I’ll be quiet in a second, but just today a Yale University study came out that said the president’s vaccination program saved over 2 million lives, prevented 17 million hospitalizations, and saved almost a trillion dollars in health-care costs. What do you think that right thing should look like now? If that’s the big factor, is there anything you wish you had pressed the tech companies on more seven months ago or a year ago?

When you think about the task that still remains, though — trying to convince people who are still hesitant to get vaccinated or boosted — are there lessons from vaccine rollouts in other countries that might help? I mean, we need more money. We’re already seeing the consequences of not having enough money. We’re not ordering more monoclonal-antibody treatments, and, in fact, they’ll start to run out at the end of May. We don’t have enough of Evusheld, which is the very effective treatment for the immunocompromised. We have doses for the next several months, but if we don’t order more, get more funding soon and order more doses, we’ll start to run out.

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