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Q&A on the End of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency

people wait in line for COVID-19 testing

May 11 will mark the end of the federal public health emergency for COVID-19, bringing changes to health care and public benefits. 

“Many Americans won’t feel a difference immediately at the end of the public health emergency,” Anne Sosin, a policy fellow studying rural health equity at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth, told us. “The differences will begin to accumulate over time and will be felt differentially depending on who you are.” 

These differences include changes in the cost of COVID-19 tests and treatments and the potential loss of access to free COVID-19 vaccines for people who are uninsured. There are also changes to nutrition benefits.

The biggest change originally tied to the emergency designation has already gone into effect. The public health emergency allowed states to keep millions of people on Medicaid regardless of eligibility in exchange for extra federal aid. But this continuous enrollment requirement ended March 31, Jennifer Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at KFF, told us. 

“The public health emergency is ending for everyone,” but it particularly affects certain people, Sara Bleich, a professor of public health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told us.

This public health emergency is just one of five federal emergency declarations related to the pandemic, two of which will continue past May 11. On May 5, the World Health Organization also ended the public health emergency of international concern.

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