US government ends free at-home Covid testing program this week

Both the White House and a website where people can claim their own tests have accused Congress of failing to provide additional funding for a program that offers up to 16 free tests per household since the beginning of the year.

“Orders under this program will be suspended on Friday, September 2, as Congress has not provided additional funding to replenish the nation’s testing stockpile,” it said. Covid.gov website read.
The administration launched an initiative to ship rapid tests to Americans via the U.S. Postal Service in January amid a wave of Omicron variant cases and limited test availability. teeth warned for months, In the absence of additional funding from Congressmanagement forced to rollback Its Covid-19 response efforts.

A White House official told CNN, “Congressional inaction will force unacceptable trade-offs that will undermine overall COVID-19 preparedness and response, and the consequences could worsen over time. “Unfortunately, we have limited funds to work with, so which tools and programs to invest in and which need to be scaled back, paused, or terminated altogether.” I had to make an impossible choice about what to do.”

Still, officials said the administration would “rapidly resume distribution of free tests through COVIDTests.gov” if Congress allocated additional funding, but “[u]Until then, we believe the best course of action is to reserve the remaining tests for distribution later this year. ”

Source: www.cnn.com

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