$62M available for state, local health agencies to offer free vaccines
Cynthia Blancas, 42, receives a Covid-19 vaccine by pharmacist Deep Patel, right, at CVS in Huntington Park, California, on Aug. 28, 2024. Christina House / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
A federal program that offered uninsured Americans COVID-19 vaccines for free just ended. But officials say more money is coming to help state and local governments fill the gap.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will send an additional $62 million to state and local health departments to provide free immunizations for COVID-19 and other diseases, but the extra cash still may not be enough to cover the needed amount of free vaccines in some communities.
“Cost shouldn’t be an issue” for people who want to get vaccinated, said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “Our society should be willing to make that investment.”
The federal Bridge Access program had helped state and local health departments provide free COVID vaccines for the country’s 25 million uninsured and underinsured people. Launched last September, the $1.1 billion program helped provide more than 1.5 million vaccines to individuals, a CDC spokesperson told Route Fifty in an email.
But a $4.3 billion federal budget cut to COVID-19 funding earlier this year brought the program to an abrupt demise in August. The cut led state and local public health officials to raise concerns over their ability to keep communities safe from virus outbreaks ahead of the 2024-2025 respiratory illness season.
With the majority of U.S. states already reporting heightened COVID activity, public health officials are worried that a hefty $200 price tag on new COVID boosters approved last month could deter uninsured and underinsured adults from protecting themselves against the virus that has killed more than 1.1 million Americans since the COVID-19 pandemic started.
The additional money comes from unspent funds for health departments to purchase vaccines, according to the CDC. Public health departments can use the money to buy COVID-19 vaccines and then work with local providers to administer them to the public.
Georgia, for instance, has applied for funds to cover more than 33,000 COVID shots, bringing the state’s supply of vaccines for the uninsured and underinsured to 38,140. The shots will be distributed to county health departments and private providers. Public health officials in West Virginia also anticipate receiving federal funds to purchase vaccines later this month or early October.
But the federal funds are unlikely to completely bridge the gap in many areas. In Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, for instance, there are about 100,000 adults lacking health coverage.
"Even if 10% of those adults wanted to receive a vaccine or needed to receive a vaccine, that still would be several hundred thousand dollars of cost that we would not … be able to carry," Dr. Raynard Washington, the county’s public health director, told ABC News.
Ensuring Americans have access to affordable vaccines can help close gaps in health disparities among states, said Plescia of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. States in the Southeast in particular could benefit from more public funding for immunization programs, as they are more likely to have more people who are low-income and lack insurance coverage.
Without public funding to support free vaccinations, fewer people may get vaccinated, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. Any decreases would come on top of the already declining vaccine intake rate among Americans since 2021.
And while the scare-factor of COVID has waned among many Americans, Benjamin said the virus will continue to evolve into different strains. “If we get those circulating in communities, the strains … could mutate to a strain that is not just more infectious, but more lethal,” he said.
That’s why ensuring access to the most updated vaccines is crucial for public health efforts to reduce future COVID-19 outbreaks, hospitalizations and fatal cases. Benjamin pointed to the trillions of dollars lost in economic productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If we can prevent that with a few million dollars,” he said, “I think we should.”
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