U.S. makes potentially "deadly mistake" by waiting to invest until another COVID-19 surge: report

LOS ANGELES, March 28 (Xinhua) -- The United States is making a potentially deadly mistake by waiting to invest until there is another COVID-19 surge, said a report of the Northern Kentucky Tribune.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Congress has moved fast (by its standards) to provide trillions of U.S. dollars for response, said the report published on Sunday. "But now, with the country seeing plunging rates of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, there appears to be a limited appetite for doing more."

A last-minute deal to provide 15 billion dollars for health costs fell apart before the 1.5 trillion dollars spending bill was passed. That will have almost immediate consequences, said the report.

Money to pay for testing for uninsured patients will dry up within weeks, while funding for vaccinations for the uninsured will end within months. Spending on monoclonal antibodies will drop by nearly a third this week and run out entirely by the fall, according to the report.

"I think this is a deadly mistake," David Eisenman, a physician at the Fielding School of Public Health of the University of California, Los Angeles, was quoted as saying. "Congress is making a potentially deadly mistake by waiting to invest until there's another surge."