The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed on Tuesday, Feb. 28, to end the county’s local emergency declarations due to COVID-19 at the end of March, while warning that the move doesn’t mean the virus no longer poses a threat.
“Yes, COVID-19 is still with us,” Supervisor Hilda Solis said. “No, we don’t want to abandon those tools that got us to this place … but with effective vaccines and testing abundantly available we can move on to the next phase of our response to COVID-19.”
The board voted unanimously in support of Supervisor Janice Hahn’s motion, which will end the proclamation of a local emergency and the proclamation of a local health emergency on March 31. The board’s decision came on the day the statewide COVID emergency declaration ended.
Hahn noted in her motion that the emergency declarations “saved lives and protected the health of county residents.” But it noted that thanks to the widespread availability of vaccines, therapeutics and other measures to combat virus spread and illness, “hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19 have dramatically reduced.”
“Over the last three years, the county has developed the tools to continue to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 without exclusively relying on the use of the extraordinary powers afforded by the various emergency proclamations and declarations,” Hahn’s motion states. “The county’s sustained preparedness, infrastructure and available tools in combating COVID-19 demonstrate that it is time to evaluate the county’s readiness to terminate both the county’s proclamation of local emergency and declaration of local health emergency for COVID-19.”
Supervisor Kathryn Barger said the county is “no longer at that point of needing the same level of emergency response” due to the virus.
“Although COVID-19 is still present, … we are at less risk of crippling our health care system and making it become overwhelmed,” she said.
Lifting the emergency…
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