Biden administration extends COVID-19 emergency through next year

The Biden administration is extending the COVID-19 “public health emergency” until April 2023, despite Biden’s statement in September that “the pandemic is over.” 

A Biden administration official told Reuters that the public health emergency, which allows people free access to testing and COVID-19 injections, will be extended to give the government time to offload these services to the private sector. 

But the official also said the emergency is being extended because a COVID-19 winter surge is expected. 

"We may be in the middle of one in January," he said. "That is not the moment you want to pull down the public health emergency." 

The Health and Human Services Department has promised to give 60 days’ notice to states before the emergency declaration expires, which would have been Friday. 

The decision comes days after Democrats enjoyed unexpected victories in the midterm elections last week due to mail-in ballots, which are justified by the public health emergency. 

“This just in: The Biden administration is extending the COVID-19 ‘public health emergency' until at least April,” wrote Becker News CEO Kyle Becker. “This is not about ‘public health.’ This is about blue states keeping the mass mail-in ballots for 2024.”

According to The Epoch Times, mail-in ballots were responsible for winning key races for Democrats in the midterm elections, including the surprising win by Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman, a stroke victim who struggles to speak in coherent sentences. 

“Now that ballot collection has been shown to be a much more effective way to maintain political power, Democrats in a general sense are less focused on winning votes and more focused on gathering ballots,” explained The Last Refuge on Twitter, adding, “If Democrats had to win individual ‘votes’ to gain election success, they would be at a disadvantage. It would be unfair. However, as long as Dems only need to gather ‘ballots’, they have a path to winning elections.  The process of electioneering is modified accordingly.” 

“Remember when Pelosi took back the House in 2018 and the first act she tried was mail-in ballots? It was never about Covid. This was the Holder plan all along,” said political commentator Jack Posobiec.