The Biden administration plans to reopen its popular program with the U.S. Postal Service to mail free at-home Covid-19 tests to households that request them ahead of a potential winter surge. Ordering will open Thursday.
to deplete its stockpile before winter. They warned at the time the government could not afford to purchase more tests absent new funding from Congress, and needed to preserve the “limited remaining supply” for future Covid-19 surges. More than 600 million at-home tests had gone out to households across the country by the time the program was halted.
But one person familiar with the plan told POLITICO that the Department of Health and Human Services used limited funding, leftover from the American Rescue Plan, to purchase more at-home tests that can be distributed. The U.S. suffered significant surges each of the last two winters, straining hospitals and driving labor disruptions across the country. And hospitals arefrom an early severe flu season and a wave of respiratory syncytial virus infections.
The federal response has also suffered from a lack of funding. Despite months of warnings that its Covid operation is running out of money, Congress has refused to allocate additional funding to help bolster stockpiles of tests, treatments and vaccines.
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