Med Center Health talks ending of COVID-19 Public Health Emergency declaration

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) - As of May 11, the federal COVID-19 public health emergency declaration has ended.

“It’s almost like a nightmare to look through at this point,” said Med Center Health’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. William Moss. “But I’m certainly glad we’re coming out on this side of it and looking for better things to come in the future.”

Dr. Moss called the ending of the declaration “an answered prayer,” saying he thought the day would never come.

“We have enough data that suggests that our resources are good enough to handle what we have at this point, from the standpoint of active infections,” Dr. Moss said. “Death rates are down and infection rates are down. It’s just a blessing.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports since January 2021, COVID-19 deaths have decreased by 95% and hospitalizations have decreased by 91%.

However, Dr. Moss acknowledges this may not mitigate the concerns of those who are immunocompromised.

“There are treatments for COVID now that we did not have, and these are evolving quite a bit over the past year,” Dr. Moss said. “But nonetheless, if you can get a treatment for this, it would be the best thing to do if you’re immunocompromised.”

As far as what’s next, Dr. Moss says vaccines and treatments should remain free, but only while supplies and funding lasts.

“I hope that we can continue to have these programs available until we maybe get a better handle on this, but that will be part of the issue here,” Dr. Moss said. “We will be losing the government paying for a lot of the treatments and things that we have had available to us for free.”

Dr. Moss added that he hopes medical officials will now be able to take the time to focus more on vaccine development and education.

“I think behind the scenes in the medical community, we need to be finding out what we can learn from this and make it better,” Dr. Moss said. “So we won’t have to upend our lives like we did three years ago.”

Moss stressed that though the declaration has been lifted, COVID-19 has not been eradicated. However, he remains optimistic that things will continue to look up.

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