The public health emergency for COVID-19 expires today, which means that many of the unprecedented services and funds that became available to combat the pandemic will go away. Those include free at-home tests and treatments provided by the federal government, along with more generous policies about insurance coverage and higher reimbursements to hospitals for COVID-19 patients.
Extraordinary measures like these didn’t completely insulate the country from the effects of the pandemic, which claimed more than 1.1 million lives. But they did help more than 104 million people recover from their infection, and public health experts hope that some of the measures and programs become permanent so the country can respond more quickly and effectively to the next health threat.
Here are the lessons that health experts hope political leaders and the public retain when—not if—the next pandemic strikes:
Widespread self-testing for an infectious agent is an important tool for informing people that they are sick and should isolate, thereby reducing spread of disease. Vaccines are the quickest way to provide a substantial level of protection against an infectious disease. We should invest in technologies that can be quickly scaled up. Expanding access to telehealth and other health services—such as obtaining treatments at pharmacies without a doctor’s visit—are key to limiting disease spread.
"Resilience is really important because it's how you deal with stress. If you build it, you can cope with adversity better—but also it relates to how diseases and physical things affect the body."
—Dr. Robert Hirten, clinical director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai
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Today's newsletter was written by Alice Park and Jamie Ducharme, and edited by Mandy Oaklander.
