We shall continue living with the Covid-19 virus; Biden expected to end the twin national emergencies for addressing COVID-19 mid-May

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden told Congress on Monday that he will end the two national emergencies for COVID-19 on May 11. Nearly three years after they were first declared, most of the world is getting back to normal.

With the move to end the national emergency and public health emergency declarations, the federal response to the coronavirus would be reorganized so that the virus is treated as an ongoing threat to public health that can be handled by agencies’ regular powers.

It comes after some of the emergency measures that kept millions of Americans insured during the pandemic were taken away by the government. Together with the use of most of the federal COVID-19 relief money, it would take the federal government out of the direct control of making vaccines and treatments.

Biden made the announcement in a statement against resolutions that House Republicans are bringing up this week to end the emergency right away. Republicans in the House are also getting ready to look into how the government responded to COVID-19.

Alex Azar, who was President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services at the time, first declared a public health emergency on January 31, 2020. In March of that year, Trump called the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency. Since he took office in January 2021, Biden has extended the emergencies several times. They will end in the coming months. The White House said that Biden wants to make both of them last until May 11.

In a Statement of Administration Policy, the Office of Management and Budget said, “A sudden end to emergency declarations would cause chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system, for states, hospitals, doctors’ offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans.”

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

Congress has already limited the effects of the public health emergency that affected Americans the most directly, as political pressure grew to end the declaration. For months, lawmakers have refused to give the Biden administration the billions of dollars it asked for so that free COVID vaccines and testing could continue. And last year’s $1.7 trillion spending bill, which Biden signed into law, got rid of a rule that said states couldn’t kick people off Medicaid. As a result, millions of people are expected to lose coverage on April 1.

Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said, “In some ways, the Biden administration is catching up to what a lot of people in the country have been going through.” “Even so, COVID is still killing hundreds of people every day.”

Still, Levitt said, some things will change for Americans after the emergency is over.

Once the government stops buying them, the price of COVID-19 vaccines is also expected to go through the roof. Pfizer has said that it will charge as much as $130 per dose. Only 15% of Americans have gotten the updated booster shot that doctors have been recommending since last fall.

Levitt said that people with private insurance might have to pay some money out of pocket for vaccines, especially if they go to a doctor who is not in their insurance network. There will also be no more free COVID tests you can take at home. And hospitals won’t get extra money for helping people with COVID.

Legislators did extend for another two years the flexibility in telehealth that was put in place when COVID-19 went into effect. This means that health care systems all over the country regularly give care by computer or smartphone.

The Biden administration thought about ending the emergency last year, but they didn’t because they were worried about a possible “winter surge” in cases and wanted to give providers, insurers, and patients enough time to get ready for it to end.

Officials said that the government would use the next three months to switch from emergency methods to normal ones. They warned that ending emergency authorities right away “would add confusion and chaos to this important wind-down.”

The administration said, “To be clear, the continuation of these emergency declarations until May 11 does not in any way limit what people can do about COVID-19.” “They don’t make people wear masks or get vaccines. They don’t make it hard to go to school or run a business. In response to cases of COVID-19, they don’t need any medicines or tests.”

After a slight rise during the winter holidays, the number of cases has been going down and is now much lower than it was during the last two winters. However, the number of tests done for the virus and reported to public health officials has gone down sharply.

The World Health Organization said on Monday that the coronavirus is still a global health emergency, even though a key advisory panel for the group found that the pandemic may be close to a “inflexion point” where higher levels of immunity can lower deaths caused by the virus. In December, after most of its COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, China saw a rise that had never happened before.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, said that the president should not have extended the public health emergency to do things like forgive some federal student loan debts. This was right before the White House made its announcement.

“The country is back to normal for the most part,” Cole said Monday as he introduced a bill backed by Republicans to end the health emergency. “Everyday Americans have gone back to work and school without any limits on what they can do. The government needs to face up to the fact that the pandemic is over.

On Tuesday, the House was supposed to vote on a bill that would end the public health emergency.

Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., who wrote the bill, said he still hopes the House will vote on it. He said that he was surprised by what the White House did, but he thinks that the law may have had something to do with it.

“I think we should move forward,” he said as lawmakers came back to the Capitol late on Monday. “If for some reason they don’t do it on May 11, Congress still has the chance to take back its power.”