After 3 years, COVID health emergency ends. How will that change things?
MINNEAPOLIS -- On Jan. 31, 2020, there were six confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. The federal government declared the virus a public health emergency.
After three years, the COVID public health emergency officially ends Thursday night. The change comes days after the World Health Organization ended its global health emergency concerning the virus.
COVID-19 continues to mutate and spread, but state health officials believe we have reached a major turning point and say we are ready to take this step. There will be some adjusting, but the research and tracking won't stop.
"I feel like 3.5 years was a long time. I do think though that we are now ready to make this step. I really believe that's critical," Cheryl Petersen-Kroeber, assistant commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Health, said.
It took medical professionals and scientists all of those days to figure out how we reach a point where COVID isn't in control.
"We're at a point where we can now say to people we have many tools in the toolbox that will keep us from having some of the devastation that was caused by COVID in the early days," Petersen-Kroeber said. "We have testing, we have therapeutics, and we have the most important to me: a vaccine. That's the most important we have in the toolbox. And so it means that we are now at a place where we can manage the virus with the tools that we have."
The state health department says it will change the amount of data it shares with the public, but it will still be available on its website.
With that, what protocols should we follow if we catch COVID? Is it different now there isn't a public health emergency? The answer is to basically keep doing what you've been doing, starting with getting tested and isolating at home if you're sick.
"I think what's important is if you have symptoms to test yourself. I think with all the telework that people have been doing, often you can stay home from work. You may not. You may have to call in sick for a couple days," Petersen-Kroeber said. "If you read the guidance, and again it is guidance at this point in time, you can go back to work if you're not having symptoms after five days and you're encouraged to mask for those remaining five days until you get to the ten (days)."
Another important change health officials want you to know about is that you will still be able to get a vaccine for free, but free tests won't be as readily available.
When it comes to how often you should get a vaccine, that guidance is still being worked out. COVID hasn't followed a schedule similar to the flu, where the new vaccine comes out in the late summer. Health officials are advising now for adults to get the bivalent vaccine if they haven't yet.
The rules here a little different for children 5 and under, so parents will want to find out from their health care provider what's best.
