The White House is predicting up to 100 million new Covid cases this fall. If cases do spike to these levels, we’re at risk for another round of damaging and ill-advised mandates to close schools and businesses. Some states might force children back to remote learning, putting them even further behind academically and at-risk for the depression and anxiety that comes with taking them out of school. And, as if we haven’t learned from the past couple of years, closing businesses again would decimate our economy at the worst possible moment, when employers are still rebounding from the pandemic and families are struggling with record high gas, food, and housing costs.
With all this at stake, why has the federal government halted funding for programs that provide Covid testing for America’s most vulnerable citizens? These programs make testing available for Americans who have limited access to healthcare and would be most likely to suffer economically if there is a further resurgence of Covid cases.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better. Access to readily available testing is a cost-effective way to get ahead, and stay ahead, of the next Covid wave. The ability to quickly identify and track new Covid hotspots and variants allows for hospitals, healthcare workers and individuals to prepare and protect themselves.
During the pandemic, many states created programs that provided widely available testing for their residents. These testing programs also provided the data these states needed to track the virus and to effectively and efficiently direct health resources to treat patients. To ramp up quickly, a number of states turned to the private sector for help to set up their testing programs. These public-private partnerships made it possible for states to create Covid response teams more quickly and at a lower cost to taxpayers.
Covid testing provides enormous economic benefits as well. A National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study took a look at how states performed during the pandemic and developed a ranking that measured how well states provided for the health and safety of their residents while also limiting the educational and economic impacts of how they handled school and business closures.
Notably, nine of the states in the top ten (Utah, Nebraska, Vermont, Montana, South Dakota, Florida, New Hampshire, Arkansas, and Idaho) have Republican governors, who were able to use testing data to make informed decisions that kept schools and businesses open without sacrificing the health and safety of their residents. This means more kids stayed in school, more businesses survived the pandemic, and more people kept their jobs, and these states rebounded faster as a result.
At the same time, nine out of the bottom ten (Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Nevada, Illinois, California, New Mexico, New York, DC, and New Jersey) have Democratic chief executives. Many of the top-ranked Republican-led states also had better health outcomes than DC, Pennsylvania, New York, California, New Jersey, and other states that leaned heavily on school and business closures when confronting the pandemic.
Federal funding for testing programs has run out at a time when we very much need for it to continue. It is imperative that funding be restored so that states can continue to provide Covid testing for uninsured Americans. This will alleviate the strain on hospitals and healthcare workers, help states make informed decisions, and keep our economy moving.
###