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Uninsured adults will miss out on the opportunity to receive a free COVID vaccine in August, weeks before an updated vaccine is released ahead of respiratory virus season.
Launched in 2023 through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bridge Access Program began as a way to link U. S. adults with little or no physical insurance to COVID vaccines. It was introduced just as those vaccines were moving from federal directors to advertising markets, which made it difficult for many other people who in the past had more freedom over where they got their doses.
Instead of someone having to get vaccinated for free anywhere they can make an appointment, other people with a fitness policy can get COVID vaccines at sites approved through their insurance plans, or pay out of pocket.
Raynard Washington, fitness director for Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, said the rollout of COVID vaccines at the start of the pandemic demonstrated a “wonderful example of fitness equity,” “it wasn’t about costs. “
But the end of access to COVID vaccines, covered by the federal government last fall, put doses out of reach for millions of people without good enough insurance or coverage. In 2022, an estimated 26 million Americans, about 8% of the U. S. population, did not have fitness insurance, according to the Peter G Foundation. Peterson.
In and around Charlotte, North Carolina, more than one in 10 citizens don’t have fitness insurance, Washington said. She saw how the Bridge program helped other uninsured people get vaccines to protect themselves from the threat of severe COVID infections after the pandemic. The physical emergency is over.
The Medicaid expansion in North Carolina last December also helped tie others to the physical care policy they needed, but “a number of adults will still be left behind,” Washington added.
READ MORE: How Uninsured Adults Can Still Get Vaccinated Against COVID
Since September, more than 1. 4 million doses of COVID vaccine have been administered nationwide through the Bridge Access Program, adding up to more than 812,000 uninsured people, according to an email exchanged between a CDC spokesperson and a CBS News reporter. after the successful Vaccines for Children program, which was introduced in 1994 as a reaction to a measles outbreak and prevented about 30 million hospitalizations and hundreds of millions of illnesses, according to CDC estimates.
But in March, congressional negotiations over the national budget resulted in the cancellation of $4. 3 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services in additional COVID investments. The move prematurely ended the Bridge program, which was due to expire in December and would have covered vaccines. for a new season against breathing viruses this fall. The program will run out of investment in August.
State and local public fitness departments need tactics to respond, but these are the same establishments that were chronically underfunded for years before the pandemic. Now that COVID-related investment has dried up, those same departments have even fewer resources to fall back on.
Without the Bridge Access Program, Washington said, “We don’t have enough resources to buy vaccines for everyone who is uninsured. “
“This speaks to the importance of moving universal vaccines,” he said.
Qualified federal fitness centers could possibly step in as well, and a pool of federal dollars called the infrastructure budget in the Section 317 vaccination program can also help close the gap, said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition. The budget is designed for vaccine access, protection, and efficacy and can cover awareness programs and the like, but they can’t solve everything.
“We want to think creatively and bring vaccines or other preventative means to the people who want them the most,” Juliano said.
Laura Santhanam is a fitness reporter and poll coordinator for PBS NewsHour, where she also worked as a data producer. Follow @LauraSanthanam
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