Public health advocates on Monday warned that the imminent suspension of the Biden administration's free at-home Covid-19 test program could lead to the autumn and winter surge in infections that officials have feared for months, and denounced the obstruction of Republicans who have refused to pass continued Covid-19 relief this year—even as they've approved hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending.

"It is unfortunate, if unsurprising, to watch Covid become yet another illness inadequately covered by a faulty and fragmented financing system."

"Well this is quite exactly the wrong thing to do going into fall/winter," Dr. Taison Bell, an infectious disease physician at University of Virginia, tweeted as the White House announced on its test-ordering website that a lack of congressional funding has forced the government to end shipments of free tests for the time being.

The federal portal notes that shipments "will be suspended on Friday, September 2 because Congress hasn't provided additional funding to replenish the nation's stockpile of tests."