Governor Kim Reynolds announced last week that the Public Health Disaster Emergency Proclamation would be coming to an end. 

The proclamation first went into effect at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020. District 47 Representative Phil Thompson of Boone agrees with the governor’s decision because people are largely getting back to their “normal” lives since the beginning of the pandemic.

“I think it is symbolic of the fact that we are moving on, we’re not saying it’s over, but it’s time for us to carry on and continue to find ways to mitigate risk and go about our lives. We’ve been doing this for two years.”

Thompson adds resources and other options to prevent COVID-19 from impacting people’s lives will continue, but he doesn’t believe the emergency proclamation alone will keep people safe. 

Greene County Public Health Director Becky Wolf explains what, if anything, changes in her world of public health.

“Allowing the proclamation to expire doesn’t change things as far as what we do locally. We still are providing education, we still want to do vaccinations, and testing.” 

Wolf notes the two websites that the Iowa Department of Public Health operates, including vaccinate.iowa.gov and coronavirus.iowa.gov will be decommissioned once the proclamation expires. Other changes are a weekly update report on positive cases, vaccination rates and deaths will be on the IDPH main website and long term care facilities will go back to only reporting COVID-related cases to the federal Consolidated Medicare and Medicaid System.

The proclamation is slated to expire on February 15th.