President Joe Biden on Monday officially ended the Covid national health emergency that for more than three years underpinned extraordinary efforts to provide care for a country where more than a million people died from the disease.
The White House said Biden signed a law passed earlier by Congress “which terminates the national emergency related to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
This closes lavish funding streams for Covid tests, free vaccines and other emergency measures thrown together — starting in January 2020 — to try and free the world’s biggest economy from the grip of the global pandemic.
It remains uncertain what the end of the emergency will have on the already tense southern border with Mexico, where US authorities have long struggled to manage the flow of undocumented immigrants and large numbers of asylum seekers.