When the Biden administration renews the Covid public health emergency this week, it will mark the 11th time since the coronavirus arrived that the government declared its presence a national crisis.
It may also be the last.
Senior Biden officials are targeting an end to the emergency designation for Covid as soon as the spring, after debating doing so last summer and taking a pass, three people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO. Should they do so, such a move would represent a major pivot point in the country’s battle with the pandemic.
The decision, which has not yet been finalized amid more immediate efforts to manage a recent spike in Covid cases, would trigger a complex restructuring of major elements of the federal response — and set the stage for the eventual shifting of greater responsibility for vaccines and treatments to the private market. It would kickstart a transition away from the White House-led crisis operation and toward treating the virus as a continuous long-term threat.
And for President Joe Biden, who campaigned on eliminating the virus, it would symbolize a measure of progress toward an early pledge that has proven far more difficult than anticipated to keep. “The challenge we have is there’s no clear roadmap to say where we’re at,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said of the pandemic’s trajectory. “We just have to accept the uncertainty.”
Under the current tentative plan, health officials will quietly renew the emergency declaration for another 90 days before its scheduled expiration on Wednesday. That would give the administration until early February to alert states and health industry representatives that it plans to end the designation.
The timeline means Covid’s crisis stage could be declared over as early as April, though the people with knowledge of the matter cautioned the administration could still issue additional short-term extensions if it needs more time to manage the transition — or grapple with the emergence of yet another variant.
Print Page
Email to a Friend