Earlier this month, Congress cut the purse strings to funding Covid-19 relief and response.
The decision means money that provides free Covid tests, treatments and vaccines will quickly dry up. Already, states are shutting down their vaccination sites. Already, the panic is setting in.
The $15 billion in Covid aid failed to gain enough support in Congress’s most recent $1.5 trillion spending plan that takes the country through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Those hit hardest by not funding Covid relief will be those without health insurance and those who treat them.
As soon as the news was announced, health care providers who treat the uninsured for Covid learned their reimbursements will be scaled back. In April, they will cease completely.
Roughly 28 million Americans, or 8 percent of the population, lack health insurance.
The prospect that they will simply go without diagnosis or treatment should scare the wits out of all of us. After two years, the coronavirus continues to kill Americans at far higher rates than people in other wealthy nations. Today, the U.S. death toll has topped 1 million; in Kansas it’s passed 8,000.
CONGRESS is dragging its feet to renew Covid relief because the pandemic is ebbing. New cases are averaging about 30,000 a day; a level last seen in July.
But as we know, that does not predict the future.
And if another surge occurs it would behoove us to be prepared.
But that can’t happen if funding is not available to purchase adequate stores of vaccines and if programs to develop new treatments and therapies to stay ahead of the ever-changing virus are disbanded.
On Tuesday, federal regulators authorized a second booster for those 50 and older to help protect against the ever-developing variants.
Two things cloud that picture.
One, the booster shot most likely won’t be free; and second, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis says the government will be short 118 million doses if Congress doesn’t provide more funding.
UNTIL NOW, Congress has done a good job responding to the pandemic.
But looming in the wings is Omicron BA.2, that’s recently walloped Germany, Great Britain and other countries. Today, the BA.2 subvariant accounts for 55 percent of all new cases in the United States.
The lesson?
If we want to avoid another spike in deaths like we saw this winter, then there’s no time to waste.
This is a public health emergency with plenty of warning. There’s no excuse for us not to be prepared.
