Apr 26
2023
The End of the Public Health Emergency: Top Concerns
By Ken Perez, marketing and strategy advisor to Vindeca Health and former vice president of healthcare policy and government affairs, Omnicell.
On Jan. 30, the Biden administration notified Congress that it plans to let the public health emergency (PHE) and the national emergency declarations related to the COVID-19 pandemic expire on May 11. The end of these declarations logically follows President Joe Biden’s “Sixty Minutes” interview that aired on Sept. 18, 2022 during which he stated, “The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it, but the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.”
Accordingly, on February 9, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cited these developments since the peak of the Omicron surge at the end of January 2022 to justify the end of the two emergency declarations:
- Daily COVID-19 reported cases are down 92%
- COVID-19 deaths have declined by over 80%; and
- New COVID-19 hospitalizations are down nearly 80%
Background
On Jan. 31, 2020, then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar, under section 319 of the Public Health Service Act, declared a public health emergency because of the continued spread of COVID-19. As of that date, there had been an estimated 16 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., nearly 10,000 people had been diagnosed with the virus globally, and more than 200 had died, all in China. The following day, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency.