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COVID-19 News, Week of 1/30/23

• The Biden administration announced that they plan for the Public Health Emergency to end in May.
• The US House of Representatives passed a bill this week to prevent HHS from enforcing the healthcare worker vaccine mandate. The bill is not expected to make it to law.
• The FDA has reissued the EUA letter for Paxlovid, “to revise the scope of authorization to no longer require positive results of direct SARS-CoV-2 viral testing.”
• Yesterday, the FDA’s VRBPAC advisory panel endorsed a plan to change to a bivalent formulation of the COVID-19 vaccine for the primary series, and directed vaccine manufacturers to begin working toward that goal.
• The decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations in Arkansas slowed and stabilized this week. See the ADH dashboard, wastewater surveillance, CDC’s Community Transmission, and CDC Community Levels for current COVID-19 surveillance.