President Joe Biden is preparing to extend the COVID-19 health emergency this week, possibly for the last time, sources told Politico.
According to the report, the administration is likely to extend the emergency for 90 days before it expires Wednesday, marking the 11th health emergency declaration since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
"The challenge we have is there's no clear road map to say where we're at," Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told Politico of the pandemic's trajectory. "We just have to accept the uncertainty."
The report said the Biden administration might wait until spring to end the emergency due to recent increases in infections and deaths.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that the number of new weekly cases has increased from 309,253 on Nov. 30 to 470,699 on Jan. 4. Deaths have risen from 1,764 in November to 2,731 on Jan. 4.
According to the CDC, the number of hospitalizations for COVID-19 are slightly decreasing from 6,230 during the week of Dec. 25 to 5,545 for the week ending Jan. 7, a drop of 11%.
The agency data shows the bump in new cases coming from the new omicron XBB.1.5 variant that has increased from 2.1% of cases in November to 27.6% of new cases this week.
"All the signs around them are that we're going to be battling episodic surges," Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University public health professor who has informally advised the White House, told Politico. "It's going to be déjà vu all over again."
Extending the emergency one last time would give the Biden administration time to notify the states and prepare to shift the response to the private sector instead of the government, Politico reported.
The report said that federal funding to battle the pandemic has dried up, with Congress not authorizing more money through 2023 in the recent $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, and the new GOP House majority unlikely to grant further funding requests.
"There's still a lot of passion in the administration on COVID — they understand how important it is," Gostin told Politico. "But I think people recognize there aren't a lot of new ideas, and there isn't a lot of money."
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.