The President signed an Executive Order declaring a National Emergency Friday. It basically gives the Secretary of HHS the ability to waive or modify regulations in Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP and HIPPA for the duration of the emergency. Presumably those would relate to the treatment of patients and the payments for those services.
He mentioned that there would be some kind of public-private partnership to expand testing capabilities (that would certainly be welcome)!
He also said that an additional $50B would become available to state and local governments for the response through the Stafford Act (although I don’t see that info in the actual declaration). That Stafford funding could be for “providing emergency medical care and temporary medical facilities; supplying food, water, medicine, and other supplies; and management control and reduction of immediate threats to public health and safety“.
Perhaps we will hear more about what these resources would be used for in the coming days from our state officials.
P.S. Last Friday the CDC released new guidance for folks to make decisions about whether or not to dismiss schools as a public health intervention. it includes a visual decision tree.