It’s over, Save Jerseyans. Sort of.
Two days shy of the two year anniversary of his original emergency declaration on March 9, 2020, Phil Murphy’s second “health emergency” will end on Monday. The Governor suggested that this was indeed the end of the road or at least a new phase of a “new normal” of executive authority.
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“Like today’s briefing, this action marks the end of this phase in our war against the coronavirus as we make the transition from pandemic to endemic,” the Governor told reporters on Friday at his final Covid-19 press conference.
The end of the declaration coincides with the end of the K-12 school mask mandate.
Murphy’s first emergency enacted unilaterally officially ran from March 2020 to June 2021; after the legislature extended his core powers but the declined to renew them, Murphy declared a second health emergency in January 2022.
Some orders will remain in place and Murphy will retain some emergency powers. Masks will still be mandated on mass transit, in hospitals, and inside state government complexes. His vaccinate mandate for healthcare workers and corrections officers is still in place, too, thought it was recently pushed out to May 11th.
Thousands of nursing home residents died during the pandemic and the matter is still being probed federal officials. Thousands of businesses also failed and service disruptions – notably at state unemployment offices – remain unresolved.
