More than three years after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services first declared a public health emergency, the COVID-19 public health emergency officially winds to a close today, May 11. But there are still questions about what this means for the pandemic moving forward. What will the end of the public health emergency mean for hospitals and public health agencies? How will it impact ongoing research to understand the effects of long COVID? And, critically, will vaccines and testing still be available — especially for the tens of millions of people in the U.S. without health insurance?
Jodie Guest, PhD, professor and senior vice chair of the department of epidemiology at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, teamed up with Carlos del Rio, MD, distinguished professor of medicine, epidemiology and global health, interim dean of Emory University School of Medicine and interim chief academic officer at Emory Healthcare, to answer questions about monitoring of new variants, insurance coverage for testing and treatment, and what lessons have been learned about pandemic preparedness over the past three years.