At the height of the pandemic, Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital in Oceanside, New York, had more than 400 COVID-19 patients, many of whom were very sick. These days, that number is less than five, with no patients in the intensive care unit, according to Dr. Aaron Glatt, the hospital’s epidemiologist.
Those numbers are why Glatt is OK with the federal government’s decision to end the COVID-19 public health emergency. But he also wants the public to understand what that means.
“People have to realize that the benefits that come along with being a public health emergency will go away. And some of the free things that were given out by the government … without concern about financial reimbursement are going to stop. That's number one,” says Glatt, who also serves as chair of the hospital’s Department of Medicine and chief of infectious diseases.
“Number two is that allowing an emergency situation to occur freed up some of the regulatory restrictions that normally would be present, and those will now go back into play,” he says.
After more than three years, more than , and 104.5 million documented infections, the COVID-19 public health emergency comes to an end on May 11.
“I think the biggest implication of it is symbolic,” says Jen Kates, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on health care research. “It really is a marker saying, ‘We have this important declaration that has come to an end,’ and it's symbolizing a move from this emergency state that allowed for a lot of flexibilities to a different place.”
The pandemic reached its between July 2020 to July 2021. The highest were recorded in December 2020 and January 2021.
Americans will feel the end of the COVID-19 emergency in different ways.
“The age of the free COVID test is over,” says Boris Lushniak, a former acting U.S. surgeon general (2013-2014) who now leads the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health. “Things that people will notice, for the most part, is going to be that something that was taken for granted for the last two and a half years in the midst of this pandemic, that we kind of got used to, is now going to become more complicated.”
During the pandemic, the federal government mailed more than free COVID-19 tests to people’s homes.
Going forward, at-home COVID-19 tests could become more expensive, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and people with private insurance and traditional Medicare will no longer be guaranteed to get them for free, athough private insurers might elect to cover the costs of testing.
More than 81% of the U.S. population, almost , has had at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Vaccines will continue to be free until the stockpiles purchased by the federal government run out, which experts say will probably be by the end of the year. After that, vaccines will continue to be free for most people with public and private insurance.
Medication used to treat COVID-19 also will be free for as long as the federal government supply lasts, which is probably until the fall, according to Kates. Congress has not authorized the funding needed for the federal government to continue to purchase more vaccines and treatments. Private insurance companies were never required to waive costs for COVID-19 treatment.
For the uninsured or underinsured, the Biden Administration has announced a $1 billion program that will continue to give people without insurance access to COVID-19 care at their local pharmacies, through existing public health infrastructure, and at local health facilities.
The expiring PHE isn’t the only COVID-19-related emergency measure currently in effect. The emergency measures that allow for the use of the COVID-19 vaccines and treatments will continue beyond May 11.
“People need to be reassured that the fact that the public health emergency status is going away is a positive thing, not a negative thing. It doesn't mean that we're ignoring this problem, that it’s done with,” Glatt says. “A tremendous amount of public health work will still go on and, in general, the American public is going to be well taken care of going forward regarding COVID.”
Although Lushniak agrees that the PHE should be rescinded, he worries the public will assume that COVID-19 is a thing of the past, even though COVID-19 remained the in the United States in 2022, behind heart disease, cancer and unintentional injury. Currently, in the U.S. die from coronavirus disease each day.