Joe Biden Administration Ending the Free At-Home COVID-19 Tests Order to Preserve Supply

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has announced the end of the free at-home COVID-19 test orders. The program will be stopped on Friday, according to a senior Biden administration official.

NBC News reported that the reason behind the halt of the program was due to insufficient congressional funding, with a stockpile of COVID-19 tests being depleted. In addition, officials want to have enough supply on hand in the fall surge, according to the source.

The source added that if Congress provides funding, the administration will resume the distribution of free COVID-19 tests, which can be ordered on covidtests.gov. However, if the budget will not push through, officials believe that reserving the remaining tests for distribution is the best course.

A huge majority of people in the U.S. would have the choice to get free testing or get reimbursed through private insurance Medicare or Medicaid.

U.S. President Joe Biden Halting Free COVID-19 Tests Program

Free COVID-19 tests will no longer be provided through covidtests.gov. However, COVID-19 tests will still be distributed in at 15,000 federally supported community sites such as libraries and pharmacies, including community health centers.

USA Today noted that the White House has requested more than $22.5 billion budget to fund for tests, vaccines, therapeutics, and research.

Republicans argued that the money can be found by repurposing other budgets while some Democrats objected to a plan that would bring back the money by taking back previously awarded COVID-19 relief funding for states.

Meanwhile, White House COVID-19 response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said last week that the administration will stop buying vaccines, treatments, and tests as early as this fall. Jha said in a CNN report that the availability of the products would transition to the regular health-care system. He then said that if people need a vaccine or an antiviral treatment, they would get it straight from their doctor or from the hospital.

Officials plan to use the repurposed money from other efforts to buy updated vaccine booster shots that protect against other COVID-19 subvariants.

Commercialization of vaccines involves regulatory issues, market dynamic issues, and equity issues, according to Jha.

Free COVID-19 Tests

In May, it was announced that U.S. households can now get an additional eight free at-home COVID-19 tests through the website, which brought the total number of free tests available to each household to 16.

The government first launched the website in January to allow the order of free tests in January, according to a KCRA News report.

Americans were able to get their second round of free COVID-19 tests in March.

People could order a maximum of four COVID-19 tests per household.

The Biden administration has distributed around 350 million free COVID-19 tests so far.

The White House has requested for $22.5 billion in additional funding for the COVID-19 response. However, the House has failed to grant the budget.

READ MORE: COVIDtests.gov: More Free COVID-19 Test Kits Available on Federal Government Website | Here's How You Can Order

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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