The U.S. public health emergency declared in response to Covid-19 comes to an end Thursday more than three years after the pandemic began.
The Biden administration's decision to end the emergency comes as deaths and hospitalizations have declined dramatically due to the availability of vaccines, antiviral treatments and widespread exposure to the virus.
Deaths from Covid have fallen to their lowest point since March 2020, when the rapid spread of the virus in the U.S. overwhelmed the health system and lead to widespread shutdowns of schools, businesses and public venues.
Hospital admissions from the virus have also fallen to the lowest level since the U.S. started tracking the data in August 2020.
The end of the emergency will bring significant changes in how the U.S. responds to the virus. Hospitals will lose flexibility to rapidly add bed capacity if patient admissions surge, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will scale back its efforts to track the virus.
After the emergency ends, the CDC will no longer be able to compel labs to report Covid test results. The agency does not have the authority to compel U.S. states to report new cases.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who will step down at the end of June, warned Congress last week that the agency still has to negotiate data-sharing agreements with individual jurisdictions, a time-consuming process that puts the nation at risk.
"This should worry us all primarily because of what it says about the visibility we will have into the next outbreak," Walensky told the Senate health committee. "We will be back to square one having to build and negotiate surveillance capacity while we fight a pathogen."
While public health experts agree the U.S. has many more tools to fight Covid today, they warn the virus will remain a persistent threat to the elderly, the vulnerable and the nation's fragmented, battered health-care system.
"I think we've passed the worst now, but there's going to be a steady drumbeat of hospitalizations and deaths for many years to come," said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.