The end of the covid emergency
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
The covid public health emergency is ending this week after more than three years. Today on “Post Reports,” health reporter Dan Diamond breaks down what this means for our day-to-day lives and our future pandemic preparedness.
Federal vaccine mandates and travel requirements will soon be gone as what’s left of the nation’s pandemic emergency response ends this month. The White House’s covid response team is disbanding, too – all with little to no fanfare.
“It feels like slouching across the finish line of a race,” health reporter Dan Diamond tells “Post Reports.”
“The overall tenor here is not ‘mission accomplished.’ President Biden's not standing on an aircraft carrier with a banner behind him.”
All in all, it’s a confusing moment of hopes and concerns. For millions of people, this period also marks an end to Medicaid coverage they depended on during the pandemic. Covid isn’t the threat it once was back in 2020 – confirmed deaths and cases have dropped in recent months. But the virus also doesn’t appear to be going away, and some disease experts are warning of the possibility of future waves of omicron-like illnesses.
“Covid is something I still think about every day,” Diamond says. “But it doesn't govern my life the way that it did earlier in the pandemic.”
Read more:
As pandemic experts leave the White House, some worry: what’s next?
What the end of the covid public health emergency means for you
Why are we forgetting the pandemic already?
WHO declares covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency
Covid is still a leading cause of death as the virus recedes
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning everybody. |
| 0:04.5 | And again, thank you all for being here. |
| 0:06.2 | So we just provide some high-level remarks and then happy to take your questions. |
| 0:11.3 | You know, when the president came to office two and a half years ago, he made a very clear |
| 0:16.6 | commitment to use science and evidence to protect the American people against COVID-19. |
| 0:24.4 | Today, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus star held a meeting with reporters |
| 0:29.8 | about the end of an era. |
| 0:31.8 | Now obviously we're in a different place now than we were to in a half years ago when |
| 0:35.0 | the president came to office, right? |
| 0:37.4 | Hospitalizations and deaths are down by well over 90 percent. |
| 0:42.7 | And the secretary made a decision to end the public health emergency because we are in |
| 0:46.7 | a much better place. |
| 0:49.0 | But what was interesting to our health reporter Dan Diamond was the informality of this gathering, |
| 0:54.5 | the lack of any fanfare. |
| 0:58.5 | I think they're slouching into the end of the pandemic. |
| 1:01.5 | It feels like slouching across the finish line of a race. |
| 1:04.5 | The White House's national pandemic emergency is closing out not with a bank, but with a whimper. |
| 1:11.2 | The Biden administration, really in its tenure, had been very proactive at having public health |
| 1:18.0 | briefings, having a COVID team make lots of public appearances. |
| 1:22.0 | There was real momentum and energy, not just to fight COVID, but to make the public health |
| 1:26.8 | system better, to learn lessons. |
| 1:28.9 | And at this point everyone is so tired and so burned out that for a lot of Americans, |
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