Free COVID-19 vaccines could be a thing of the past as federal program is set to expire early

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times, File

When COVID-19 vaccines entered the commercial market, the federal government introduced a program to make shots accessible to people with limited coverage or no insurance. That program — which provided millions of free shots to low-income people — is now coming to a halt, U.S. health officials said.

The Bridge Access Program is set to end in August, months earlier than local health departments and health centers expected as pandemic-era funding from Congress is expiring. Biden administration officials are seeking permanent funding so that routine vaccinations can remain free for adults, through a program akin to the long-standing Vaccines for Children program, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said via email.

Leaders at health centers and departments said without the Bridge Access Program, they're worried about how they'll secure funding for vaccines in preparation for the winter respiratory viral season when hospitalizations and deaths tend to increase. Many low-income Americans may be unable to afford vaccines for the novel coronavirus and its myriad variants. Updated vaccines will be formulated to target these strains, but pandemic-era funding will be gone.

Leaders at the National Association for Community Health Centers, a nonprofit advocacy group, said they knew the program was temporary, but were surprised to hear it was ending this August. As looming respiratory illnesses such as flu, RSV and COVID-19 increase in the colder months this year, health centers will continue to immunize people daily, said Sarah Price, the association’s director of public health integration, in a statement. “Health centers will either stock these vaccines or refer to resources within their community — with an aim to addressing access barriers and closing the loop,” she said.

Since Bridge Access launched in September 2023, it has provided more than 1.4 million free COVID-19 vaccines through retail pharmacies, community health centers and public health departments across the U.S., David Daigle, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson, said in an email. The CDC did not respond to inquiries about whether the agency told health centers and departments the Bridge program would be ending in August.

Vaccine manufacturers Novavax and Pfizer said via email they planned to assess their accessibility options for U.S. consumers in the wake of this change and help ensure the vaccines were accessible for uninsured and underinsured patients. Moderna did not respond to a request for comment.

The loss of the program has made health officials worry about an uptick in cases.

“This is creating a barrier that could lead to much larger resurgences of COVID,” said Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director at the Emory University Vaccine Center. Orenstein formerly worked as the U.S. National Immunization Program director with the Vaccines for Children program launch in the 1990s and foresees trouble if vaccines are not made more accessible.

“I hope I'm wrong. But I think that (it's) better to remove barriers to access when we have such safe and effective vaccines than to prevent people [who want] those vaccines to get vaccinated.”

The U.S. has reached a record low of uninsured people, the Department of Health and Human Services announced in August. However, about 7.7% of the population, or around 25 million people, still don't have health insurance. Among adults 18 and older, 11% are uninsured.

In addition, millions of adults have less-than-robust health coverage through their employer and many earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. People in this category likely would have had difficulty getting a COVID-19 vaccine without Bridge Access funding.

The vaccine funding is ending as Medicaid is being rolled back across the U.S. Nearly 22 million people who had Medicaid during the pandemic have been disenrolled as of May 10, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy organization.

The next round of COVID-19 vaccines — intended to target dominating strains — has not been released.