The emergency declaration for the pandemic has been in force since January 2020
The government of USA extended this Friday the emergency declaration for the covid-19 pandemic until spring 2023 to respond to a hypothetical increase in cases during the winter months.
This Friday was the last day available to the Administration led by Joe Biden to notify of the end of the emergency declaration, something that, not having happened, automatically extends it until at least April of the next year.
The emergency declaration for the pandemic has been in force since January 2020.
In late September, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, said that although The country has made significant progress in its fight against covid-19 compared to last year, the pandemic is not over yet.
“Between 300 and 400 people a day die from covid. we’re not over it“, he told a group of reporters on a visit to a vaccination center in Washington.
The comments of the person in charge of the Health portfolio thus qualified the statements that the US president, Joe Biden, had previously given to the CBS network, where he assured that “the pandemic is over.”
“What the president said is what everyone feels, that we are much better now” Than a year ago, assured Becerra.
However, Biden’s statement has already had an echo among Republicans in Congress, who seek to lift the declaration of national emergency.
A group of 17 House lawmakers wrote a letter asking Biden to kill the measure, and a Republican senator introduced a resolution for the upper house to vote on the same.
“The federal government has spent some ten billion dollars, which has resulted in an economic crisis”the legislators wrote in the letter.
Becerra dismissed the idea of lifting the emergency declaration now and said that in order to make a decision, they must wait for the scientific community to make a pronouncement.
“We are going to wait for the scientists to give us a guide and tell us where we stand”assured.
Between August and September 2022, the US reported an average of 356 deaths daily by covid-19, and the disease caused by the virus is the third leading cause of death in the country, after cancer and heart disease.