**Use this form to add your ORGANIZATION to the open statement against ending the declaration of the COVID Public Health Emergency (PHE).**

Drafted by the SILVER Collaborative

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Participants and allies of the Institutional Rescue and Recovery Coalition’s national arm, the SILVER collaborative (Saving Institutional Lives Via Emergency Relocation) are appalled at the Biden Administration's scheduled end of the nationwide COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) as of May 11, 2023.

By lifting the Public Health Emergency, the Administration will increase the spread of disease, greatly reduce COVID-19 testing and treatment, and end essential support for people with disabilities and other marginalized groups. Ending the PHE will negatively impact health care and health care coverage for people on Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP, COBRA, and other group health plans — especially for marginalized people who had difficulty accessing care even before the pandemic. Ending the PHE will increase food insecurity for tens of millions—especially our children and elders—due to decreasing SNAP benefits and eligibility. 

By lifting the Public Health Emergency, the Biden Administration is communicating to the public that COVID-19 is no longer a threat, willfully ignoring that hundreds of people in the United States still die from the virus every single day. Many of the people that die are among the most devalued in our society — elders; people with disabilities; people trapped in congregate settings (long-term care facilities, institutions, jails,  prisons, and detention centers); people with low incomes; the unhoused; and Black, Brown and Indigenous people. The Administration is declaring that the death of hundreds of people in the United States per day does not rise to the level of being an emergency.

The Biden Administration’s untimely lifting of the Public Health Emergency will increase deaths, especially of marginalized people. To the degree that precautions are being taken, these efforts will greatly diminish when the PHE is no longer in effect. Removing the PHE adds hurdles to using preventive measures and gives the nation permission to abandon efforts which are proven to reduce the spread of COVID.

People with disabilities and many other marginalized groups are once again being told that the loss of our lives is inconsequential. Lifting the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency validates the public’s denial of the continued deadliness of COVID-19 and confirms to elders, people with disabilities, people trapped in congregate settings, and Black, Brown and Indigenous people that we are expendable.