President Joe Biden officially terminated the COVID-19 national emergency on Monday. The emergency declaration had been in place for three years.
“On Monday, April 10, 2023, the President signed into law: H.J.Res. 7, which terminates the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the White House announced in a press release.
CNN reported that an unidentified White House official claimed that ending the emergency “does not impact our ability to wind down authorities in an orderly way.
“Since Congress voted to terminate the National Emergency earlier than anticipated, the Administration has worked to expedite its wind down and provide as much notice as possible to potentially impacted individuals.”
The official added that “ending the National Emergency will not impact the planned wind-down of the Public Health Emergency on May 11,” according to CNN. “But since Congress moved to undo the National Emergency earlier than intended, we’ve been working with agencies to address the impacts of ending the declaration early.”
CNN did not share any details about this unnamed official or explain why the official could not be identified.
While the White House is now seemingly downplaying the effect of ending the national emergency, it previously predicted that it “would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system,” as reported by The Hill.
H.J.Res.7, which ends the national emergency declared by then-president Donald Trump on March 13, 2020, passed in the Senate on March 29 in a 68-23 vote.
The legislation previously passed the House on February 1 in a 22-197 vote.
Every member of Congress who voted against the bill, in both the House and the Senate, was a Democrat.
While the COVID-19 national emergency is now over, some people maintain that Americans should not overlook the restrictions enacted by government officials while it was in place.
Roger Shafer, a senior advisor for the Dallas Young Republicans, told The Dallas Express that “we can never forget the forced lockdowns, unjust imprisonment, false science, unquantifiable harm to children, and universal authoritarian threats [im]posed on citizens that fundamentally changed the fabric of American society.”
The Dallas Express reached out to the Dallas County Democrats for comment on the same subject but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
While ending the national emergency came earlier than the White House said it would, the Biden administration still plans to end the public health emergency on May 11, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Both emergencies were declared by the Trump administration in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
