When the Biden administration announced earlier this year that the national public health emergency would officially end May 11, North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services began making plans to change the way it manages and tracks the virus.
This month, many of those plans were put into place. Here’s what you need to know:
What is changing
Last week, N.C. DHHS revamped its COVID-19 dashboard, which has been a source of the state’s coronavirus data for years, said Dr. Susan Kansagra, the department’s assistant secretary for public health.
The dashboard, once filled with various graphs and numbers, has been stripped down to three metrics: emergency room visits, hospital admissions and wastewater monitoring.
Individual COVID-19 cases will no longer be tracked — experts say this data point is no longer accurate, as many positive at-home tests are not reported to health departments. Other metrics like records of COVID-19 deaths and vaccination status will be kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This doesn’t mean the state will be worse at tracking COVID trends, Kansagra said. Rather, she said the three selected metrics distill the available information to paint an accurate picture of the virus’ impact.
Dr. Cameron Wolfe, a Duke Health infectious disease expert, agreed with this strategy. These data points taken together answer some of the most important questions at this phase of the pandemic: Do the vaccines work? How many severe cases are there? What strains of COVID-19 are spreading?
Some benefits enjoyed during the pandemic, like free COVID-19 tests or vaccines, will also phase out in the coming months.
The stockpile of vaccines — which were purchased by the federal government and distributed to each state — will soon be depleted. That means health care providers will have to purchase the vaccines from manufacturers and charge insurance companies for the shot.
Kansagra said most insurance plans cover the entire cost of preventative services like vaccines and uninsured North Carolinians would qualify for free shots via the federal Bridge Access Program.
COVID-19 tests provided by the state and federal governments, which are currently still available online here, will similarly be phased out this summer, Kansagra said.
A new chapter of COVID-19
One reason the state’s COVID strategy is shifting is that the virus poses a substantially lower threat than it did in 2020, Wolfe said.
Barring any extreme changes, the COVID variants appear to be becoming less severe. Most Americans have built up robust immunity to the virus from vaccinations or past infections. Treatments for the illness have become remarkably effective. Even the risk of developing long COVID is much lower, partly due to vaccine protection and partly due to natural shifts in the virus.
That’s not to say COVID-19 won’t continue to affect daily life. People will continue to get sick and some will face complications. For people with compromised immune systems — which by some estimates includes millions of Americans — the virus might be part of their risk calculations for the foreseeable future.
“People often conflate the word ‘endemic’ to mean, When does it no longer affect the way we go about our lives?” Wolfe said. “It became clear very early that we were never going to get rid of this.”
But Wolfe said the trajectory of the virus makes it unlikely that the coronavirus will cause the same societal disruptions it did in prior years.
“I don’t see any scenario where we’re going back to lockdowns or thousands of people off work because they’re sick or the hospitals are chock full,” he said.
And if that’s the case, he said, it may be time to reallocate some of the resources for the pandemic response to other public health efforts.
Teddy Rosenbluth covers science and health care for The News & Observer in a position funded by Duke Health and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.
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