The Biden administration will pause its program to send Americans home for free COVID-19 tests this week, blaming Congress for not funding more rounds of shipments.
Americans who have not yet ordered the 16 free tests through the federal portal have until Friday to place their orders.
“Ordering through this program will be suspended on Friday, September 2 because Congress has not provided additional funding to replenish the nation’s stockpile of tests,” the Department of Health and Human Services says on the page.
Since ordering opened in May for a third round of free COVID-19 testing, the US Postal Service has allowed households across the country to request up to three orders of free testing, for a total of 16 tests.
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Through the website, a senior administration official says the federal government has distributed more than 600 million free tests so far. The remaining stock of tests is being held until the end of the year, in preparation for a “further increase in infections and more acute need”.
The official said federal health authorities “will quickly resume the distribution of free tests” if Congress secures more funding.
The Biden administration also opened orders in June for at-home tests specifically designed to work with a smartphone app accessible to Americans who are blind or have limited vision.
However, citing a “significant increase in demand” for the tests, the department says these accessible tests are now “temporarily sold out”.
By January, the Biden administration had contracted up to 500 million free at-home tests to be shipped across the country from various manufacturers.
A White House request to fund this and other ongoing COVID-19 response efforts has stalled for months in Congress, prompting warnings from federal health officials about “a significantly reduced national testing capacity ” as manufacturers shut down their supply lines.
Other federal efforts to cover free COVID-19 testing are also winding down.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s expanded testing operation, which offered free lab tests to places like schools and shelters, will stop offering the service at the end of the year. A Health Resources and Services Administration program to reimburse providers for testing uninsured Americans expired in March, “due to a lack of sufficient funds.”
For people with private insurance or Medicare Part B coverage, plans are still required to cover up to eight tests per month until the end of the public health emergency. The current declaration will expire in October, although the Biden administration is expected to renew the emergency for at least a few more months after that date.
A growing proportion of Americans have turned to rapid at-home tests, which the Food and Drug Administration now says require up to three separate tests to rule out some SARS-CoV-2 infections. A feared winter surge in the virus could lead to more than a million hospitalizations and 181,000 deaths in a worst-case scenario, modelers say.
But in the wake of little movement on Capitol Hill to fund the Biden administration’s COVID-19 efforts, White House officials say they have begun work to transition some parts of the response to the market private
Government distribution of a COVID-19 antibody drug, Eli Lilly’s bebtelovimab, is ending this month, after the FDA recently amended its emergency use authorization to allow the treatment was sold commercially.
“One of the things we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about in the last few months, and we’ll continue that work, and you’ll hear more from the administration about this, is getting us out of this problem. Emergency phase in which the US government is buying the vaccines, buying the treatments, buying the diagnostic tests,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s top COVID-19 official, at an event hosted by the Chamber of Commerce Foundation earlier this month.
Health care officials say the first formal talks are expected to begin this week with the Biden administration on the issue.
“We have to get out of this business for the long term,” Jha said.
More Alexander Tin
CBS News reporter covering public health and the pandemic.