The Biden administration issued a new eviction moratorium on Tuesday after progressive lawmakers turned up the pressure as protections for millions of vulnerable renters lapsed over the weekend.

The national moratorium on evictions, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first put in place in September 2020, expired on July 31 without further extension .

The CDCs new moratorium targets counties with elevated rates of COVID-19 infections and will last for 60 days.

This moratorium is the right thing to do to keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings where COVID-19 spreads, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.

It is imperative that public health authorities act quickly to mitigate such an increase of evictions, which could increase the likelihood of new spikes in SARS-CoV-2 transmission, Walensky continued. Such mass evictions and the attendant public health consequences would be very difficult to reverse.

Roughly 3.6 million adults in the United States reported they were within two months of eviction as of June, including 2 million households with kids, according to recent census data . Those individuals and families were left to rely on individual state and city policies as of Sunday. Only a handful of states have their own eviction moratoriums in place.

Until now, the White House has been adamant that it did not have the legal authority to extend a national ban on evictions not even a more targeted one citing a month-old Supreme Court ruling .

On this particular issue, the president has not only kicked the tires, but double, triple and quadruple checked, White House adviser Gene Sperling told reporters just Monday.

Notably, the Supreme Court ruling from June did not ban the White House from extending the moratorium. But in his concurring opinion allowing for the moratorium to stay in place through July, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that he believed any further extension would need congressional approval.