The public health emergencies in Massachusetts and the U.S. are about to expire.
With the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency arriving on Thursday, many people may be wondering how life will change.
The answer, top Massachusetts health officials said Tuesday as they discussed what to expect, is that this next phase of the pandemic may feel a lot like it has for some time now.
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"This is not the end of the pandemic, this is not the end of COVID, this is the end of the emergency phase," Public Health Commissioner Dr. Robert Goldstein said.
The state and federal COVID-19 public health emergency declarations both end on Thursday, bringing changes in policies on masking in health care settings and vaccine mandates for executive branch employees. Along with last week's declaration from the World Health Organization of the end of the COVID global public health emergency, it may feel to many like a symbolic end to the pandemic era.
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The public health emergency allowed resources like testing, vaccines and treatments to be mobilized and provided for free. For now, much of that will continue; Goldstein said officials are working to keep vaccinations accessible and available, and that staying up to date with vaccinations remains the best way to prevent getting sick from COVID in the future.
"On May 11, folks can still go and get a vaccine wherever they were getting a vaccine before and the cost of that vaccine will still fall to the federal government, so nobody should be limited in their access to vaccines," he said.
Home tests may not be covered by insurance after when the public health emergency ends, but the state has a stockpile of over 2.5 million rapid tests that can be distributed to institutions and communities that need them.
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Dr. Larry Madoff, the medical director for the state's Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences, noted that COVID levels have already dropped to a place where they don't need to engage with most of the restrictions put in place for the pandemic.
"For many people, they've been living their lives for some time now, and I think that's a good thing," Madoff said.
People who have COVID are still being encouraged to stay home — but Goldstein noted that's the same advice public health officials have had for people with any respiratory virus.
Both officials were asked to look back at what they remembered from the last three years.
Goldstein said he was working as an infectious disease doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in the early days of the pandemic, when he had to decide which of the people who were coming were sick enough to be given one of the 20 tests available each day. Now, he said, "we are in such a different place."
Madoff recalled "families unable to visit their relatives in the hospital who were sick and dying, people who were kept apart, children who were kept out of school ... it does feel like a little bit of a breath of relief to see things getting better."
