Washington, DC, USA — After more than three years of unprecedented efforts to offer care for a country where more than a million people perished from the disease, US President Joe Biden officially declared the end of the COVID public health emergency.
After Congress enacted legislation “which terminates the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the White House announced that President Biden had signed it.
Beginning in January 2020, lavish funding streams for COVID tests, free vaccines, and other emergency measures cobbled together to free the world’s largest economy from the grip of the global pandemic will be discontinued.
Less specific is the effect of the end of the emergency on the already tense southern border with Mexico. US authorities have struggled for years to manage the movement of undocumented immigrants and many asylum seekers.
During the official health emergency, Title 42 imposed stringent restrictions on the admission of undocumented arrivals. This is about to end, necessitating the administration’s adoption of a different legal mechanism if it wishes to prevent future influxes’ potentially damaging political effects.
According to AFP, a high-ranking White House official said the administration plans to let Title 42 disappear on May 11th.
The White House stated that although the United States is formally turning its back on the global pandemic, the Biden administration is already working on a vaccine for the next generation and other measures to combat future virus variants.
“Through public-private partnerships, Project NextGen will speed up and make it easier to make the next generation of vaccines and treatments,” a senior administration official told AFP.
A minimum of $5 billion is available to “accelerate scientific progress” and “stay ahead of the virus that causes COVID-19 as it rapidly evolves.”