 Welcome to Friday's Overnight Health Care. President Biden hosted a Rose Garden celebration for the passage of his COVID-19 relief bill. The weather at the White House was warmer than January, but Sen. Berne Sanders (I-Vt.) adopted a familiar pose during the event. Follow us on Twitter at @PeterSullivan4 and @NateWeixel. Biden is planning a PR blitz to sell the relief bill, expanded ObamaCare subsidies will be available next month, and the U.S. topped 100 million COVID vaccines administered. Let's start with the stimulus: White House plans PR blitz to sell coronavirus relief bill The White House is mounting an all-out push to sell President Biden’s newly signed coronavirus relief bill to the public, starting with trips to multiple states in the coming week. A key facet of the strategy will be to highlight components of the measure that impact Americans directly, like the $1,400 stimulus payments. The White House is also trying to underscore the broad bipartisan support among voters for the legislation, even though it received no votes from Republicans, who consistently called the $1.9 trillion package partisan and too expensive. Where they'll go: Next week, Biden will host an event at the White House on implementation of the rescue plan before traveling to Pennsylvania and Georgia as part of what the White House has branded the “Help is Here” tour. Vice President Harris will travel with her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, to Nevada and Colorado, while first lady Jill Biden will travel to New Jersey and New Hampshire. More trips could be announced in the coming days. Won't make the same mistakes: Administration officials say Democrats fell short during the Obama era of selling the 2009 economic recovery bill. Whether Democrats can maintain popularity for the newly enacted COVID-19 relief bill will play a key role in determining the party’s fortunes in the 2022 elections. The trips across the country — many of them targeting swing states — are the center point of the White House’s campaign to highlight the tangible deliverables of the American Rescue Plan Act, including the $1,400 direct payments going to the majority of Americans and funding for vaccine distribution and school reopenings. Read more here. A major milestone: US passes 100 million COVID-19 vaccine shots given The United States has passed 100 million vaccine doses administered, a big milestone that shows the pace of the vaccination campaign is accelerating. The U.S. also set a new record for shots administered in a day on Friday, at 2.9 million, according to the White House, with the seven-day average up to 2.3 million per day. About 35 million people have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while about 65 million have received at least one dose. Almost 65 percent of people over age 65 have received at least one dose, up from 8 percent when President Biden took office, the White House said. Different from Biden goal: Biden has set a goal of 100 million shots in his first 100 days in office, starting from Jan. 20 when he became president, rather than mid-December when the first shots were given, a mark he suggested he would reach by his 60th day in office. Read more here.
An overlooked part of the relief bill: expanded ObamaCare subsidies. Those will become available April 1, Biden officials say Additional financial assistance to help ObamaCare enrollees afford their health insurance premiums will become available starting April 1, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Friday. The additional subsidies are part of the American Rescue Plan that President Biden signed into law Thursday. The extra financial assistance will help lower premium costs for millions of ObamaCare enrollees. Premiums will now be capped at the maximum of 8.5 percent of income, down from about 10 percent. People who make more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level, about $100,000 for a family of four, will become eligible for financial assistance for the first time, helping prevent them from having to pay full freight for their plans. Complicated logistics: People who already have ObamaCare coverage this year will need to go back to healthcare.gov after April 1 and update their applications to be able to get the additional financial help. If people do not update their applications, they will need to wait until next spring when they file their taxes to be able to get the extra money. Read more here. WHO says no link between AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots AstraZeneca is struggling to deliver its promised doses to the European Union, and now it is trying to deal with reports of serious adverse events that may have nothing to do with its vaccine. The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday said there was no risk from taking AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, even as some countries have paused distribution over blood clot concerns. Despite no clear evidence of a link, countries including Iceland, Denmark and Norway have halted their use of AstraZeneca's vaccine following reports that it could be connected to blood clots. During a briefing Friday, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus reiterated that the European Medicines Agency has said there is no indication of a link between the vaccine and Mariângela Simão, a WHO assistant director-general, said she thinks people have confused causation with correlation. "People die every day," she said, adding that more than 335 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally so far and no deaths have been found to have been caused by the vaccines. Read more here. More from WHO: Johnson & Johnson vaccine gets emergency use listing The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday issued emergency use authorization for Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for the one-shot dose to be used as part of the WHO-led international vaccine distribution effort. The green light from WHO, which comes a day after the European Medical Agency approved the shot, means countries that receive vaccine through Covax will also get the vaccine. J&J's vaccine provides fewer logistical hurdles than other shots given that it requires just one dose instead of two and does not need to be stored in ultra-cold temperatures. “Every new, safe and effective tool against COVID-19 is another step closer to controlling the pandemic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “But the hope offered by these tools will not materialize unless they are made available to all people in all countries. “I urge governments and companies to live up to their commitments and to use all solutions at their disposal to ramp up production so that these tools become truly global public goods, available and affordable to all, and a shared solution to the global crisis," he added. Read more here.
What we're reading Did CDC’s misguided mask advice drive up Covid death toll for health workers? (Kaiser Health News) Bombshell analysis traces new Ebola outbreak to survivor of West Africa crisis (Stat) To extract more doses per vial, vaccinators put squeeze on FDA to relax vaccine handling advice (Kaiser Health News) State by state Coronavirus vaccine production could boost Merck’s hiring in Durham (WRAL) California hits target of 2 million vaccines in low-income areas, clearing way for reopenings (Los Angeles Times) As COVID-19 cases decline across Texas, testing rates are dropping too (Texas Tribune) | 
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