The federal COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) will formally expire on Thursday, May 11. The emergency declaration has been in place since March 2020, with periodic extensions.
The primary changes with the PHE expiration will come through changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 data and surveillance. In addition, the financial burden for testing and medications will shift to individual patients and/or their insurance plans.
The end of the US PHE follows last week’s announcement by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), that the WHO will end the COVID-19 public health emergency of international concern that was declared in January 2020.
These US and international announcements come at a time when cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have diminished significantly from their various peaks. The wide availability of vaccines and treatments for most of the population, especially in the US, has made managing individual- and community-level infections more effective than at any point in the PHE.
Even in hospitals, medical authorities are exploring the necessity of mask requirements in the general population. A recent opinion piece from Annals of Internal Medicine describes the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and the infection control measures in hospitals, reviewing the utility of continuing masking requirements in healthcare settings.
The authors suggest that while masking was necessary in the acute phases of the pandemic, the improved state of readiness and population response to the virus reduces the need for such blanket measures. They argue that while mitigation measures such as masking should continue to be employed in higher-risk populations and settings, the financial burden, communication impedance, and psychological impact of universal masking may outweigh the marginal benefit of reduced COVID-19 transmission.
Although the domestic and international PHE may be ending, health authorities have been clear in suggesting the threat of COVID-19 is not over. Nearly 7 million individuals around the world and more than 1 million in the US, have died from the virus, and while deaths have slowed, mortality remains relatively high.
The ACS, which has monitored and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic since it began, will continue to provide updates relevant for surgeons as they develop.
