Turning a page on pandemic
COVID 'emergency,' vax mandate over May 11
Gov. Maura Healey is ending the state’s COVID-19 public-health emergency and vaccine mandate on May 11, coinciding with the feds’ corresponding move.
Healey said in a press release yesterday morning that the announcement two months in advance “allows additional time for impacted organizations to prepare” for the next chapter.
“Thanks to the hard work of our health care providers and communities, we’ve made important progress in the fight against COVID-19,” Healey said in a statement. “We know that we have the tools to manage this virus — vaccines, masking, testing, getting treatments and staying home when sick — and we’ve reached the point where we can update our guidance to reflect where we are now.”
Throwing a bone across the aisle to her predecessor Gov. Charlie Baker, as the Democrat Healey has taken to doing with the Republican, she continued on to say that “I’d also like to acknowledge the leadership of Governor Baker and his administration, who saved countless lives by putting these important measures in place in a time of immense crisis.”
Notably among the changes that will come May 11 is the vacating of Executive Order No. 595, which required state employees to get vaccinated. The administration touted the policy, which had been challenged in court, as having achieved its aims.
“Executive Order No. 595 has been a successful tool for boosting vaccination rates and reducing the spread and severity of COVID-19 in Massachusetts,” Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said in a statement.
The Healey-Driscoll administration, which took power in January, makes this move a day after the Herald first reported that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration had signed agreements with two unions to formally end enforcement of its vaccine mandate as officials say the city is assessing what to do next with the order as a whole.
While the state did discipline employees under its mandate, the city never actually enforced its vax rule, which became and remains tied up in court.
The state said 99% of its employees followed the mandate, though nearly 1,000 of the 41,629 total state workers left their jobs at one point due to the vaccine mandate. Of those, about two-thirds were fired, and the others left voluntarily. Some were then rehired.
Some coronavirus requirements remain in place “in certain roles and settings.”
“This has been a long journey for our membership. We have been seeking the same treatment as other Commonwealth employees and for our leaders in government to hear our voice,” State Police Association
of Massachusetts President Patrick McNamara said. “Today, the HealeyDriscoll Administration did just that with the announcement to rescind Executive Order 595.”
Healey’s office touted that the governor plans to file legislation to continue some pandemic-era practices, including changes in ambulance staffing and an extra six months for outof-hospital dialysis centers to get back up to prepandemic staffing requirements.
This comes exactly three years after one of the most striking weeks in recent history as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the country, shutting the world down in mid-March 2020. Baker declared a state of emergency March 10, 2020, and though that ended in 2021, the public-health emergency has remained in place in modified forms.
On the federal level, President Biden’s administration has said it’s ending the national public-health emergency May 11.