With the conclusion of the federal government shutdown that began Oct. 1 and lasted 43 days, government funding has been extended through January 2026. During the shutdown, funding and employee deficits impacted the University’s federally-funded research, telemedicine services offered through U.Va. Health and flights for holiday travel.
The Senate passed an agreement Monday which proposed a compromised funding package to reopen the government. The bill has now passed through the House of Representatives and received President Donald Trump’s signature to end the shutdown Wednesday. The bill extends funding through January and secures back pay for furloughed federal workers. The Commonwealth saw over 900 furloughed federal workers file for Virginia unemployment during the first two weeks of October.
Nationwide, the shutdown has brought air traffic staffing shortages and delays, lapses in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and over one million federal workers going unpaid, to name a few impacts. The unforeseen length of the shutdown has caused canceled holiday flights, delayed reimbursement or review of research grants and telemedicine services not being covered by Medicare or Medicaid.
Research
The National Institutes of Health halted all non-essential activities, including grant peer and advisory council reviews and issuance of new awards. Many research labs at the University rely on organizations like the NIH and the National Science Foundation for relatively large grants that sustain their work.
According to Biology Prof. Ali Güler, any researcher with an NIH grant to be reviewed or participant in a NIH review panel has been negatively impacted by the shutdown, and this impact is only exacerbated by the earlier funding cuts to the NIH.
“Structural and financial changes that were implemented at the NIH … have already negatively impacted our work and the future of the lab,” Güler said. “It is not clear if we will be able to recover from these down turns.”
Biology and Psychology Prof. Xiaorong Liu said many University professors engaged in research faced delays in their grant proposals being reviewed and receiving grant funds that had been previously approved. In conjunction with significant research cuts earlier this year, labs are unsure of when and from where their next source of funding will come.
“You cannot just wait for [funding] for a while … I submitted one [grant proposal] in March, another one in the summer … I cannot do it every day, every cycle,” Liu said. “You have to have some kind of hope or expectation.”
Liu expected one of her proposals to be reviewed by the NIH Board Oct. 22 — she said that these dates are set well in advance, and in her case, over a year — but this did not happen due to the shutdown. Liu said she is unsure whether the proposal will be reviewed in December after the reopening of the government, or during the next review cycle, which is set to begin in February. She had another proposal that was supposed to be reviewed in the previous February cycle, but that one was also delayed due to funding cuts and was instead reviewed in April.
“Quite a lot of proposals are backlogged in the system already,” Liu said. “NIH may consider [my proposal] if there is a budget, but it may not … with all these moving parts, we don’t know.”
Even as the government reopens, Liu said that the grant funding would not immediately begin flowing — grant reviews require a board of around 30 scientists from universities nationwide to convene. In the meantime, Liu said she has private foundation funding that helps maintain her lab’s research activities, although larger NIH funds will eventually be necessary for the lab’s long-term needs.
Travel
Many air traffic controllers have been calling out of work after missing over a month of pay. Primarily in compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration shutdown order, more than 1,000 airline flights were canceled Friday, and ultimately, the major U.S. airports must enforce a 10 percent reduction in flights by the end of the week.
40 airports have been the targets of the cancellations, and every single destination of the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport is included on this list. Richmond International Airport is not one of the 40 but also flies to many of the affected airports. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport had the most flight delays and cancellations of any airport in the world Friday night with over 350 cancellations and over 150 delays.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said flight cancellations will continue until the FAA sees safety improve after controllers return to work. The University expects most students to travel home over Thanksgiving annually, and approximately 33 percent of the student body qualifies as out-of-state.
SNAP Benefits
Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Monday that Virginians receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will receive 65 percent of these benefits for the month of November. These benefits were distributed Thursday, after Youngkin formed the Virginia Emergency Nutrition Assistance fund in late Oct. and had already distributed 25 percent of benefits to eligible households.
Medical Services
Although clinical care offered by U.Va. Health is generally supported by patient revenue, according to Eric Swensen, U.Va. Health public information officer, the shutdown and lack of a continuing funding resolution have led to the stoppage of coverage of telemedicine services for those under Medicare Part B plans, which cover outpatient medical services.
“For the most part, the government shutdown has not led to any immediate impacts in either claims processing or payments from [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] to U.Va. Health,” Swensen said. “However, the shutdown and lack of a continuing funding resolution have resulted in non-coverage of telemedicine services for Medicare Part B patients.”
Swensen said that patients residing in rural areas could opt to switch the virtual visits to an in-person format to receive coverage. Student care through Student Health and Wellness was not impacted by the shutdown.
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