The Biden administration is seeking to extend its COVID-19 emergency declaration beyond the midterms.
Three people with knowledge of the matter told Politico that the decision, which has not been made final, would ensure that federal measures protect some form of health coverage, access to vaccines, and treatments.
"COVID is not over," one senior Biden official stated. "The pandemic is not over. It doesn't make sense to lift this [declaration] given what we're seeing on the ground in terms of cases."
If the proposed extension goes through, the Department of Health and Human Services will continue the declaration past the November midterms and likely into 2023.
But an HHS spokesperson declined to comment on the matter. Still, others close to the administration warned the situation might change ahead of the Aug. 15 deadline for deciding whether to extend the measure.
The Biden administration has increasingly insisted that COVID vaccines and boosters allow Americans to live with the virus in relative safety. But this assertion comes at a time when caseloads are topping 100,000 a day.
"It will end whenever the emergency ends," one senior administration official said.
But with vaccines and treatments already widely distributed, no expectation remains that the administration can stop COVID; this comes when other health officials, over the last several months, have discussed a phasing-out from the emergency declaration and what it should look like.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.