U.S. moving on from COVID-19 after 2 years' battle with pandemic

People watch the game during the San Francisco SailGP in San Francisco, the United States, March 26, 2022. (Photo by Liu Yilin/Xinhua)

"Other variants and subvariants of the virus may loom, but two years after the initial lockdowns, polling shows Americans of almost all political persuasions are turning the page," writes U.S. television personality and writer Kristen Soltis Anderson.

NEW YORK, March 28 (Xinhua) -- As spring breezes in, the United States appears to move on from COVID-19 after two years' strenuous fight against the pandemic, with health services returning to normal, public facilities reopened one after another and social life picking up in every detail.

NO MORE FREE

As the White House pleads with Republicans in Congress for emergency aid to fight the coronavirus, the federal government said that a fund established to reimburse doctors for care for uninsured COVID-19 patients was no longer accepting claims for testing and treatment "due to lack of sufficient funds."

"Some U.S. health care providers are informing uninsured people they can no longer be tested for the virus free of charge, and will have to pay for the service," reported The New York Times (NYT) on Monday. Uninsured people will now have to pay around 125 U.S. dollars to be tested, while other testing services may charge up to 195 dollars.

The federal COVID-19 uninsured program was established in 2020 to pay the medical bills of coronavirus patients who lack health coverage. Early this year, during the Omicron wave, the program allowed leading laboratories to perform 500,000 tests a month free of charge to uninsured individuals.

People enjoy the view of cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., the United States, March 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

CAPITOL AND CONE

The U.S. Capitol will reopen to the public on Monday for guided tours, two years after the coronavirus pandemic halted the visits. Tours will only be available for limited groups of people who have registered in advance. The move marked Congress' latest relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions. Mask requirements inside the Capitol were relaxed weeks ago.

U.S. ice cream chain Dairy Queen's Free Cone Day, typically held at the start of spring but canceled the last two years amid COVID-19, is back on Monday. In 2020, Dairy Queen "postponed" Free Cone Day but didn't reschedule; last year, the promotion was canceled as the chain said the day is known for attracting "long lines at our restaurants."

U.S. television personality and writer Kristen Soltis Anderson recently tweeted that, after "two years to slow the spread," Americans are moving on from COVID-19. "Other variants and subvariants of the virus may loom, but two years after the initial lockdowns, polling shows Americans of almost all political persuasions are turning the page," she wrote.

A man experiences how plants grow in a natural environment with an AR device during the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference and Festivals in Austin, Texas, the United States, March 12, 2022. (Xinhua/Xu Jianmei)

FRESH AIR INDOOR

With the pandemic entering a new phase in the United States marked by fewer precautions and the rise of the even more transmissible Omicron subvariant BA.2, the Biden administration has begun stressing the importance of mitigating the risk of indoor aerosol transmission, the primary driver of the pandemic.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued expert guidance to building managers, contractors and business owners, with two pages of recommendations that codify the best practices on ventilation, air filtration and air disinfection from academic experts and federal agencies of the last two years.

"U.S. federal health authorities were initially slow to identify airborne transmission of the virus. It was only in October 2020 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognized that the virus can sometimes be airborne, long after many infectious disease experts warned that the coronavirus traveled aloft in small, airborne particles," reported NYT.