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)

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