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Thursday, May 8, 2025

President Biden to end COVID-19 emergencies on May 11 

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827 days ago
20230131
President Joe Biden talks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023, after returning from an event in Baltimore on infrastructure. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President Joe Biden talks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023, after returning from an event in Baltimore on infrastructure. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in­formed Con­gress on Mon­day that he will end the twin na­tion­al emer­gen­cies for ad­dress­ing COVID-19 on May 11, as most of the world has re­turned clos­er to nor­mal­cy near­ly three years af­ter they were first de­clared.

The move to end the na­tion­al emer­gency and pub­lic health emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions would for­mal­ly re­struc­ture the fed­er­al coro­n­avirus re­sponse to treat the virus as an en­dem­ic threat to pub­lic health that can be man­aged through agen­cies’ nor­mal au­thor­i­ties.

It comes as law­mak­ers have al­ready end­ed el­e­ments of the emer­gen­cies that kept mil­lions of Amer­i­cans in­sured dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Com­bined with the draw­down of most fed­er­al COVID-19 re­lief mon­ey, it would al­so shift the de­vel­op­ment of vac­cines and treat­ments away from the di­rect man­age­ment of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

Biden’s an­nounce­ment comes in a state­ment op­pos­ing res­o­lu­tions be­ing brought to the floor this week by House Re­pub­li­cans to bring the emer­gency to an im­me­di­ate end. House Re­pub­li­cans are al­so gear­ing up to launch in­ves­ti­ga­tions on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to COVID-19.

Then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Health and Hu­man Ser­vices Sec­re­tary Alex Azar first de­clared a pub­lic health emer­gency on Jan. 31, 2020, and Trump lat­er de­clared the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic a na­tion­al emer­genc y that March. The emer­gen­cies have been re­peat­ed­ly ex­tend­ed by Biden since he took of­fice in Jan­u­ary 2021, and are set to ex­pire in the com­ing months. The White House said Biden plans to ex­tend them both briefly to end on May 11.

“An abrupt end to the emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions would cre­ate wide-rang­ing chaos and un­cer­tain­ty through­out the health care sys­tem — for states, for hos­pi­tals and doc­tors’ of­fices, and, most im­por­tant­ly, for tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans,” the Of­fice of Man­age­ment and Bud­get wrote in a State­ment of Ad­min­is­tra­tion Pol­i­cy.

More than 1.1 mil­lion peo­ple in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 since 2020, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, in­clud­ing about 3,700 last week.

Con­gress has al­ready blunt­ed the reach of the pub­lic health emer­gency that had the most di­rect im­pact on Amer­i­cans, as po­lit­i­cal calls to end the de­c­la­ra­tion in­ten­si­fied. Law­mak­ers have re­fused for months to ful­fill the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­quest for bil­lions more dol­lars to ex­tend free COVID vac­cines and test­ing. And the $1.7 tril­lion spend­ing pack­age passed last year and signed in­to law by Biden put an end to a rule that barred states from kick­ing peo­ple off Med­ic­aid, a move that is ex­pect­ed to see mil­lions of peo­ple lose their cov­er­age af­ter April 1.

“In some re­spects, the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is catch­ing up to what a lot of peo­ple in the coun­try have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing,” said Lar­ry Levitt, the ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent for health pol­i­cy at Kaiser Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion. “That said, hun­dreds of peo­ple a day are still dy­ing from COVID.”

Still, some things will change for Amer­i­cans once the emer­gency ex­pires, Levitt point­ed out.

The costs of COVID-19 vac­cines are al­so ex­pect­ed to sky­rock­et once the gov­ern­ment stops buy­ing them, with Pfiz­er say­ing it will charge as much as $130 per dose. On­ly 15% of Amer­i­cans have re­ceived the rec­om­mend­ed, up­dat­ed boost­er that has been of­fered since last fall.

Peo­ple with pri­vate in­sur­ance could have some out-of-pock­et costs for vac­cines, es­pe­cial­ly if they go to an out-of-net­work provider, Levitt said. Free at-home COVID tests will al­so come to an end. And hos­pi­tals will not get ex­tra pay­ments for treat­ing COVID pa­tients.

Leg­is­la­tors did ex­tend for an­oth­er two years tele­health flex­i­bil­i­ties that were in­tro­duced as COVID-19 hit, lead­ing health care sys­tems around the coun­try to reg­u­lar­ly de­liv­er care by smart­phone or com­put­er.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered end­ing the emer­gency last year, but held off amid con­cerns about a po­ten­tial “win­ter surge” in cas­es and to pro­vide ad­e­quate time for providers, in­sur­ers and pa­tients to pre­pare for its end.

Of­fi­cials said the ad­min­is­tra­tion would use the next three months to tran­si­tion the re­sponse to con­ven­tion­al meth­ods, warn­ing that an im­me­di­ate end to the emer­gency au­thor­i­ties “would sow con­fu­sion and chaos in­to this crit­i­cal wind-down.”

“To be clear, con­tin­u­a­tion of these emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions un­til May 11 does not im­pose any re­stric­tion at all on in­di­vid­ual con­duct with re­gard to COVID-19,” the ad­min­is­tra­tion said. “They do not im­pose mask man­dates or vac­cine man­dates. They do not re­strict school or busi­ness op­er­a­tions. They do not re­quire the use of any med­i­cines or tests in re­sponse to cas­es of COVID-19.”

Case counts have trend­ed down­ward af­ter a slight bump over the win­ter hol­i­days, and are sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low lev­els seen over the last two win­ters — though the num­ber of tests per­formed for the virus and re­port­ed to pub­lic health of­fi­cials has sharply de­creased.

On Mon­day, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said the coro­n­avirus re­mains a glob­al health emer­gency, even as a key ad­vi­so­ry pan­el for the group found the pan­dem­ic may be near­ing an “in­flex­ion point” where high­er lev­els of im­mu­ni­ty can low­er virus-re­lat­ed deaths. Chi­na, for ex­am­ple, re­port­ed an un­prece­dent­ed surge in De­cem­ber af­ter lift­ing most of its COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

Mo­ments be­fore the White House’s an­nounce­ment, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Ok­la., ac­cused the pres­i­dent of un­nec­es­sar­i­ly ex­tend­ing the pub­lic health emer­gency to take ac­tion on is­sues like for­giv­ing some fed­er­al stu­dent loan debts.

“The coun­try has large­ly re­turned to nor­mal,” Cole said Mon­day, in­tro­duc­ing a Re­pub­li­can-backed bill call­ing for an end to the health emer­gency. “Every­day Amer­i­cans have re­turned to work and to school with no re­stric­tions on their ac­tiv­i­ties. It is time that the gov­ern­ment ac­knowl­edges this re­al­i­ty: the pan­dem­ic is over.”

The House was sched­uled to vote Tues­day on leg­is­la­tion that would ter­mi­nate the pub­lic health emer­gency.

The bill’s au­thor, Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said he still hopes the House will pro­ceed with a vote. He said he was sur­prised by the White House move, but thinks the leg­is­la­tion may have played a role in prompt­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion to act.

“I think we should go for­ward,” he said late Mon­day as law­mak­ers re­turned to the Capi­tol. “If for some rea­son they don’t do it on May the 11th, the ve­hi­cle is still there for Con­gress to take back its au­thor­i­ty.”  —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

Sto­ry by ZEKE MILLER and AMAN­DA SEITZ | As­so­ci­at­ed Press. AP Con­gres­sion­al Cor­re­spon­dent Lisa Mas­caro con­tributed.

COVID-19US President Joe BidenUnited States of AmericaInstagram


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