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Massachusetts to lift COVID-19 public health emergency

 Springfield Health and Human Services Commissioner Helen Caulton-Harris discussed the status of the pandemic at a City Hall briefing in 2020.
Paul Tuthill
/
WAMC
Springfield Health and Human Services Commissioner Helen Caulton-Harris discussed the status of the pandemic at a City Hall briefing in 2020.

State and federal emergency status will both end on May 11th

The COVID-19 public health emergency in Massachusetts will end on May 11th.

It is the same date when the federal emergency is being lifted.

Gov. Maura Healey’s office announced last week that she planned to end the public health emergency status that has been in place since the spring of 2021.

The declaration two years ago from then Gov. Charlie Baker was intended to allow public health officials to take steps to support COVID-19 testing and vaccination, protect higher risk populations, continue to monitor the virus and respond to outbreaks.

To find out the implications for ending both the federal and state emergencies, WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill spoke with Springfield Health and Human Services Commissioner Helen Caulton-Harris.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.