Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
What The Covid Emergency Taught Us: Public Health Failures, Future Worries
The New York Times: Public Health Lessons Learned From The Coronavirus Pandemic
A lot went wrong during the coronavirus pandemic as the virus tore through a polarized nation and public health leaders, policymakers and elected officials struggled to respond. Chronic underinvestment in public health at the federal, state and local levels only made things worse. All told, more than 1.1 million people have died of Covid-19 in the United States, and more than 1,000 are still dying each week. (Stolberg and Weiland, 5/11)
Wired: The End Of The Covid Emergency Is A Warning
In the US, new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all trending downward, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s also true of cases and deaths in the EU. But when the US ends its emergency on May 11, the CDC will stop tracking community levels of transmission and instead will track overall hospitalization and death rates. The emergency declaration mandated that local data be provided, and that will now lapse. And with less data, it will be harder to track new variants, which in turn will complicate the puzzle of updating vaccines to provide the most protection, although in some areas wastewater surveillance and genomic surveillance will continue. (Hoover, 5/9)
The Boston Globe: Is The COVID Pandemic Really Over? Here’s What The Data Show
Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician and public health expert at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said that, while overall deaths this spring are slightly lower than expected, they would be lower still if not for the continued presence of the coronavirus. “By now, I was hoping we would actually have a lot of deficit mortality,” said Faust, who analyzed Massachusetts mortality numbers for The Boston Globe. Deficit mortality occurs when surges of illness, like last winter’s COVID uptick, cause people to die sooner than expected, leading to a compensating period of fewer-than-usual deaths. (Kuchment, 5/10)
Axios: End Of COVID Emergency Leaves A Black Hole Of Health Data
The expiration of the COVID-19 public health emergency today will cut off a pipeline of data that tallied the pandemic's human toll and offered a view of how the stealthy virus spread. More than 1.1 million Americans have died from COVID over the course of the public health emergency, or about 980 people a day. (Moreno, 5/11)
More reaction from health care experts and families affected by covid —
Stat: Covid Emergency Is Ending, But Ashish Jha Says Fight Goes On
On the eve of the expiration date for the federally declared coronavirus public health emergency, White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha warned that the pandemic is far from over. “I don’t see this as an end to the pandemic or fighting Covid,” Jha said at a STAT event in Boston on Wednesday. “I see this as a transition out of this emergency phase into a very different phase.” (Castillo, 5/10)
CNN: Dr. Sanjay Gupta: The Covid-19 Emergency Is Ending. It's Time For The Patient To Leave The Hospital
If you look only at absolute numbers, the decision to end the PHE might make you scratch your head. After all, there were almost 9,900 new hospital admissions related to Covid in the US for the week ending May 1, and there were roughly 1,050 deaths per week at the end of April. Comparatively, when the first PHE declaration was signed at the end of January 2020, there were no deaths reported in the United States (the first US death wouldn’t be tallied until February 29). In fact, it wasn’t until February 10 that deaths worldwide topped 1,000. In medicine, however, numbers and data are important, but trends tell an even richer, more complete story. (Gupta, 5/10)
The New York Times: Families Of Those Lost To Covid Wrestle With Mixed Emotions As Emergency Ends
More than 1.1 million Americans have died of Covid, and the rate of death has markedly slowed in recent months. In 2020 and 2021, it was the third most common cause of death; by this point in 2023, preliminary data show, it has dropped to seventh. But the move by the Biden administration that takes effect on Thursday has landed with mixed emotions for many Americans who have lost family members and friends to the pandemic. (Bosman, 5/11)
CIDRAP: Social Media Posts Reveal Emergency Medicine Docs' Strain During Pandemic
A study today in JAMA Network Open found that social media posts spotlighted heightened levels of anxiety, anger, and depression among emergency medicine (EM) physicians during COVID-19 compared with posts during the prepandemic period. The authors of the study say their findings offer insight into the professional burnout seen widely across the medical field in the past 3 years. (Soucheray, 5/10)
What the government is saying —
HHS.Gov: Fact Sheet: End Of The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency
We know so many people continue to be affected by COVID-19, particularly seniors, people who are immunocompromised, and people with disabilities. That is why our response to the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, remains a public health priority. To ensure an orderly transition, we have been working for months so that we can continue to meet the needs of those affected by COVID-19. (5/9)
HHS.gov: Letter To U.S. Governors From HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra On Planning For The COVID-19 PHE
Through partnerships with you and others, we are now in a better place in our response than we were three years ago, and we can transition away from the emergency phase. (Xavier Becerra, 5/10)
