The days of free coronavirus tests, antivirals and vaccinations may be coming to an end. The Biden Administration says it has run out of funds to purchase fourth doses of the COVID vaccine for all Americans, if they are needed.
Additional funding was contained in the House version of the Fiscal Year 2022 omnibus spending bill, but it was stricken in negotiations with the Senate and excluded from what was finally adopted and signed into law by President Biden. The omission puts Biden’s post-pandemic Test to Treat initiative in question.
Administration officials say they have secured enough doses of vaccines for older Americans and an initial vaccine regimen for children under age five if approved by federal regulators. They lack the money to purchase or reserve vaccines for other age groups or for new coronavirus variants that require boosters.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has predicted the United States would need to acquire 750 million more doses to achieve protection for 70 percent of Americans. Nearly 30 percent of Americans have already received a Pfizer and Moderna booster shot. Other countries have begun administering second booster shots.
The inability to pre-purchase more vaccines, tests or antivirals, the administration says, will handicap its efforts to maintain capacity in case of another coronavirus wave or a new pandemic.
In a letter to Congress, the administration said as of March 22 the “uninsured program will stop accepting applications for new claims for testing and treatment due to lack of insufficient funds. Providers will no longer be able to submit claims for providing these services to uninsured individuals, forcing providers either to absorb the cost or turn away people who are uninsured, increasing the disparity in access to critically needed health care and putting additional burdens on safety net providers.”
The administration also told Congress it lacks funding for “additional monoclonals, including a planned order for March 25,” requiring a “cut in state allocations of our limited existing supply of life-saving monoclonal antibody treatments by more than 30 percent”. So far, the administration has secured 20 million oral antiviral pills, which it pre-purchased because it had funding.
The inability to pre-purchase more vaccines, tests or antivirals, the administration says, will handicap its efforts to maintain capacity in case of another coronavirus wave or a new pandemic.
The funding was ditched from the omnibus spending bill because of GOP concern over how previous funding had been spent. Utah Senator Mitt Romney raised questions about how much already authorized funding remains unspent and whether actual spending had been evaluated for effectiveness and the metrics used in that evaluation. He also asked about outcomes from money distributed to states.
Biden announced the Test to Treat initiative in early March to enable people to be tested at local pharmacies and receive free antiviral pills on the spot if he or she tests positive. The currently authorized antivirals require patients to take them within the first five days of symptoms. The timing of the initiative’s rollout has been vague, but now is more in doubt because of the congressional funding delay.
