The announcement will come little more than a year after the novel coronavirus made landfall in Minnesota, and one day after the state reported the full vaccination of more than 2 million residents.
"As millions of Minnesotans are getting vaccinated, Governor Walz is making plans to wind down COVID-19 restrictions and get Minnesota back to business as usual," Walz's spokesperson Teddy Tschann said in a news release. "The vaccine is here and it has proven to be our best tool to control the virus. Its time to roll up our sleeves, get vaccinated, and crush the virus."
The governor in recent days has said he planned to announce the rollback of COVID-19 restrictions, loosened most recently in March. He said that disease transmission and vaccination rates were favorable enough allow for the return in August of the Minnesota State Fair, which was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Though the state appears to be recovering from a recent surge in infections, the coronavirus pandemic is by several measures still very much active in Minnesota.
While vaccination rates have also slowed somewhat, Walz said this week that he still expects approximately 70% of Minnesotans above the age of 12 to be inoculated by June, and that a "normal-looking summer" would follow. Approximately 45% of residents older than 16 were fully vaccinated as of Wednesday, May 5.
Federal health authorities are expected to approve the version of the vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer for children ages 12 and older as soon as next week, according to media reports, which could further bolster Minnesota's vaccination numbers. In an email, State Health Department spokesperson Doug Schultz said plans were being made for that possibility.
"Just as we have worked with other sectors of Minnesotas population to meet them where they are, we will use multiple strategies to reach this population," he said in an email. "Possibilities include utilizing their primary care provider, pharmacies, local public health clinics, and school-located vaccination opportunities."
Following are the Minnesota Department of Health COVID-19 case rates, deaths, hospitalizations and vaccinations as of Wednesday. Because all data is preliminary, some numbers and totals may change from one day to the next.
SEVEN-DAY, ROLLING AVERAGE OF NEW CASES PER 100,000 PEOPLE: 29 (As of Monday, April 26)
SEVEN-DAY, ROLLING AVERAGE TEST POSITIVITY RATE: 5.9% (As of Monday, April 26)
ACTIVE HOSPITALIZATIONS: 580
TOTAL HOSPITALIZATIONS: 30,691
DEATHS, NEWLY REPORTED: 17
TOTAL DEATHS: 7,191
FIRST DOSE ADMINISTERED: 2,598,691 people or 58.9% of residents ages 16 and older
COMPLETED SERIES (2 DOSES): 2,007,635 or 45.5% of residents ages 16 and older
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Tents of mountaineers are pictured Monday at the Everest Base Camp in Nepal. Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Tents of mountaineers are pictured Monday at the Everest Base Camp in Nepal.
The coronavirus pandemic has reached the top of the world, where it has reportedly disrupted the annual climb up Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks just as the window for summiting the mountains opens up.
In recent days, reports have emerged of an outbreak at Everest Base Camp in Nepal, at 17,597 feet (5,364 meters), where hundreds of climbers assemble each year to adjust to the oxygen-starved altitude as they prepare to ascend the 29,032-foot (8,849-meter) peak.
The BBC and The Guardian have reported recently what climbers have anecdotally been seeing, and posting to social media rising numbers of positive coronavirus tests and climbers with COVID-19 symptoms.
According to the BBC, base camp officials say there have been 17 confirmed cases after tests at hospitals in the capital, Kathmandu, where climbers with symptoms were sent for treatment. It said that staff at a private hospital in Kathmandu had confirmed that climbers tested positive after arriving from Mount Everest.
Last month, Polish climber Pawel Michalski posted to Facebook that "more than 30 people have already been evacuated [by air] to Kathmandu, with suspicion of pulmonary edema - later found to be positive for coronavirus."
Prem Subedi, the undersecretary at Nepal's Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, told the BBC, "None of the COVID cases at Everest Base Camp have been reported so far to the Ministry."
May usually presents 10 to 15 days of good weather for reaching the summit of Mount Everest and the country's other peaks.
The apparent infections at Everest Base Camp come as Nepal, like neighboring India, has been battling a new surge in coronavirus cases and deaths. On Wednesday, Nepal's health ministry recorded 58 new COVID-19 deaths, with a new daily record of 8,605 coronavirus infections, according to The Kathmandu Post. While those numbers pale in comparison with India's more than 382,000 cases on Wednesday, Nepal's population of 29 million is a tiny fraction of its neighbor to the south.
Last month, Nepal's Department of Tourism reported that despite the pandemic, it expected the number of climbing permits this year nearly to equal the record 381 issued in 2019.
Nepal's Himalayan Times on Wednesday reported a similar outbreak at Mount Dhaulagiri, the world's seventh-tallest peak, with more than 10 climbers both foreigners and Sherpas evacuated by air from the mountain's base camp to Kathmandu after preliminary reports of COVID-19 infection.
It said that five climbers, including one foreigner, were similarly airlifted out of the base camp on Tuesday.
For Immediate Release: May 05, 2021
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a new report titled, Resiliency Roadmap for FDA Inspectional Oversight, outlining the agencys inspectional activities during the COVID-19 pandemic and its detailed plan to move toward a more consistent state of operations, including the FDAs priorities related to this work going forward.
Like most organizations around the world, the FDA experienced unprecedented and unique challenges during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In particular, our inspection, surveillance and compliance activities were significantly impacted, said Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D. The FDA fully understands the importance of getting back to a more consistent state of inspectional capacity. This plan provides the public with a transparent picture of both the successes and challenges weve faced in these areas over the past year, as well as our plan moving forward. We want to assure the American public that we have used a variety of tools to oversee the regulated industry and ensure that Americans continue to have access to safe food and high-quality FDA-regulated products.
In March 2020, the FDA announced that it was temporarily postponing all domestic and foreign routine surveillance facility inspections, while continuing mission critical inspections when possible. Beginning the week of July 20, 2020, the FDA began to work toward resuming prioritized domestic inspections using its COVID-19 Advisory Rating system. The report outlines inspections that the agency was unable to complete during the past year due to travel restrictions or inability to ensure the safety of our workforce or the workforces the agency regulates. The report also outlines the number of mission-critical inspections the agency completed during that time, such as inspections of facilities for which there was a drug shortage, inspections needed for the approval of novel drugs or drugs related to the potential treatment of COVID-19, support of pre-market and pre-license applications and response to foodborne disease outbreaks or other food safety risks such as undeclared allergens.
Among other things, the report highlights:
Additionally, the report outlines the FDAs continued successful use of alternative tools and approaches where inspections were or are not currently feasible, including remote interactive evaluations (e.g., remote livestreaming video of operations, teleconferences or screen sharing), record requests and leveraging information from trusted regulatory partners. For example, over 1,300 record requests have been made to human and animal drug and biologic drug manufacturers that have led to a high level of on-time regulatory decision actions.
The report further outlines the ongoing steps the agency is taking in order to resume standard operational levels of inspection activities, including how it intends to prioritize domestic and foreign inspections that were not performed during the pandemic. The plan highlights a variety of possible scenarios given the continued uncertainty of the trajectory of the ongoing pandemic. Inspections considered critical to the FDAs mission will remain the primary focus. When planning routine surveillance inspections, the agency will prioritize higher-risk establishments. Therefore, a longer interval between inspections will occur for the less high-risk facilities as the FDA adjusts to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that postponed inspections will be prioritized based on risk and conducted over a longer period of time, ultimately increasing the amount of time between inspections of certain lower-risk facilities.
The agency will also soon begin a multi-year modernization effort to further transform our data enterprise platforms and cross-program interoperability infrastructure to better support innovation related to its regulatory oversight role, including remote approaches. This modernization effort will include a review of inspectional approaches using next-generation assessment technologies and improvements. The FDA is also establishing an agency-wide FDA Inspectional Affairs Council that will plan and coordinate inspectional activities. The agency intends to share more information on these efforts as this work progresses. The FDA will continue to leverage and maximize every available tool and resource to meet its inspectional responsibilities, while achieving optimal public health outcomes.
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Boilerplate
The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nations food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.
05/05/2021
Official birth data from the final months of 2020 were released last night from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics. The data confirm what many suspected and what we predicted back in June 2020 and further discussed in December 2020: nearly 40,000 missing births in the final month and a half of 2020, which would have otherwise been conceived in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There were 53.9 births per 1,000 women (at an annualized rate) in the last quarter of 2020, in October, November, and December. That is substantially lower than the 57.6 annualized births per 1,000 women in the last quarter of 2019. However, not all of that decline can be attributed to the early stages of the pandemic. Birth rates have fallen steadily in the U.S. since 2007. Assuming births would have fallen between 2019 quarter 4 and 2020 quarter 4 at the same rate by which they fell between 2018 quarter 4 and 2019 quarter 4 (specifically, 2.3 percent), the observed drop between the final quarters of 2019 and 2020 incorporates a 4.3 percent excess decline. (Figure 1 plots quarterly birth rates for 2018, 2019, and 2020.) Since the effects of the pandemic in the U.S. really took hold in March 2020, only missing births from the second half of the quarter can reasonably be attributed to effects of the pandemic. The estimated COVID impact on births is thus twice as large an excess decline of 8.6 percent.
We estimate the excess decline in births potentially attributable to the early stages of the COVID pandemic for women by age group. This exercise shows that the largest excess birth rate declines occurred for women between the age of 15 and 24 and above age 35. (Figure 2 plots the predicted COVID induced declines in birth rates by age group.) This would correspond with the largest number of averted births among those most likely to be in newer relationships (younger women) and those most likely to already have a child (older women). In the words of economists, births to younger and older women might be considered more marginal, whereas women and couples in their late 20s and early 30s are most likely to be committed to having a child during this time. Unfortunately, the birth data do not allow us to do more detailed subgroup analyses, such as looking by occupation or industry or employment status.
These data reflect birth responses to the very early days of the pandemic. Additional data that comes out over the following months will reveal how the path of the pandemic and associated recession played out for women and couples and their childbearing over the course of the year.
Austin, Texas Austin Public Health (APH) updatedthe COVID-19 Risk-Based Guidelinestoday, May 4, to clarify personal behavior recommendations for those who are fully vaccinated versus those who are partially or not vaccinated.
Individuals who are vaccinated may:
Individuals who are partially or not vaccinated may:
Regardless of vaccination status or stage, individuals need to continue to follow the additional requirements of local businesses, venues and schools, as theHealth Authority Rulesremain in place through May 18.
We want people to getvaccinated, said Dr. Mark Escott, Interim Austin-Travis County Health Authority. Now andcertainly in the future asthe vaccination rate improves,there will be improved freedom associated withvaccination. In other words, the need to continue masking and the other necessary precautionswill continue to decrease for those who are vaccinated.
Additionally, the threshold to enter Stage 2 has been updated to 5-14 new hospital admissions on the 7-day moving average. The threshold to enter Stage 1 has also been updated to less than 5 new hospital admissions on the 7-day moving average or 70%-90% herd immunity is achieved through vaccination.
While APH monitors the 7-day moving average of COVID-19 new hospital admissions as the primary key indicator for the Risk-Based Guidelines, additional key indicators, including positivity rate, the doubling time of new cases and current ICU and ventilator patients, are monitored to determine the current staging.
As a result of both declining length of hospital stays and declining mortality rates, we feel comfortable reassessing the transition of stages, added Dr. Escott. We expect that there isgoing to be a long tail interms of achieving vaccine herdimmunity or completely getting COVID-19 out of our community. So, we expect that we may seea slow decliningplateau of cases, and as thevaccination rate improves inthe community, and we hit70% to 90% vaccinated we could lookat transitioning to Stage 1 safely.
Austin-Travis County remains in Stage 3 of the Risk-Based Guidelines, with acurrent 7-day moving average of new hospital admissions of 17.
For additional COVID-19 information and updates, visitwww.AustinTexas.gov/COVID19.
As set forth in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP), employers and certain governmental employers are allowed to claim refundable tax credits that reimburse them if they choose to provide paid sick and family leave due to COVID-19, including leave taken to receive and/or recover from COVID-19 vaccines. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently issued afact sheetfurther explaining how employers may claim those tax credits. The ARP tax credits are available from April 1, 2021, through September 30, 2021.
The IRS defines eligible employers for the ARP tax credits as follows:
Any business, including a tax-exempt organization, with fewer than 500 employees;
A governmental employer, other than the federal government; and
Any agency or instrumentality of the federal government that is not an organization described in section 501(c)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Employers that choose to provide this leave may claim tax credits for any wages paid for leave taken by employees who are unable to work or telework due to reasons related to COVID-19, including leave taken to receive COVID-19 vaccinations. Employees may also take leave to recover from any injury, disability, illness, or condition related to the vaccinations.
The expansion of eligible employers receiving tax credits is certainly enticing for employers to continue providing COVID-19 related paid time off for their employees. Eligible employers may encourage their employees to get vaccinated and even provide a paid day off. The employer would then receive a tax credit equal to the wages paid to employees for that day. Providing paid leave for COVID-19 vaccines and any vaccine related side effects may help encourage additional Wisconsinites to receive the vaccine. As noted above, the time period began April 1, 2021, and continues through September 30, 2021. Davis|Kuelthau will update you if this time period is extended or any other future tax credits are offered to employers.
2021 Davis|Kuelthau, s.c. All Rights ReservedNational Law Review, Volume XI, Number 125
We recently estimated that the U.S. was close to its COVID-19 vaccine tipping point that is, the point at which vaccine supply may start to outstrip demand. We also noted that national averages may mask important differences by state. We therefore sought to understand where states fall along this spectrum; such differences are important for understanding how best to target efforts to increase vaccine coverage throughout the country.
To do so, we looked at the share of adults with at least one vaccine dose by state, daily rates of first doses administered (using a 7-day rolling average), and how this rate has changed in the last week (see methods). We were particularly interested in identifying states that may still have relatively low vaccine coverage (i.e., below 50% of adults 18 or older) coupled with evidence of a decline in the uptake of first doses, as these states may present the biggest challenges for achieving sufficient vaccine coverage in the U.S.
As of April 29, among the 50 states and DC, we find that:
The share of adults who had received at least one vaccine dose was 55% overall, and ranged significantly across the country from a low of 41% (Alabama) to a high of 74% (New Hampshire). In addition, there is evidence of a decline in the pace of new uptake in most states. The daily rate of first dose administration at the national level is 451 per 100,000, ranging from 136 per 100,000 (Mississippi) to 889 (Rhode Island). Most states (31 of 51) are vaccinating below the national rate, reflecting the fact that vaccination rates are generally higher in larger states (e.g., California and Pennsylvania). Furthermore, the rate of first dose administration per 100,000 in the last week dropped for the U.S. overall (-27%) and for almost every state (45 of 51) (see Table 1).
At the higher end of the vaccine coverage spectrum, more than 60% of the adult population has received at least one dose in 12 states. These states are primarily in the Northeast (8 of 12). Seven have vaccination coverage of at least 65% and all but 2 (New Hampshire and New Mexico) are administering first doses at well above the U.S. rate. Eight of the 12 states have seen declines in first dose administration rates over the past week, suggesting that these states may be approaching or have reached demand saturation, albeit at relatively high vaccination coverage levels and rates of administration.
At the lower end of the vaccine coverage spectrum, less than 50% of the adult population has received at least one dose in 13 states, including 6 that are below 45%. Nine of these states are in the South and in all, the daily rate of first vaccination per 100,000 is below the national rate. Moreover, most are experiencing declines in the rate of first doses administered. This suggests that these states may not only be approaching or have reached their tipping points, they have done so at relatively low levels of vaccine coverage.
The remainder of the states, which fall in between these two extremes, are primarily in the Midwest and, to a lesser extent, the South and West. In about half of these states, between 55% and 60% of adults have received at least once dose. All but one experienced declines in the rate of first doses administered in the last week.
States that demonstrate a combination of low overall vaccination coverage along with slow and declining vaccine uptake raise the greatest concerns. There are the 13 states with less than 50% coverage with at least one dose, all of which are vaccinating their adult populations below the national rate. Twelve of these states also saw declines in the rate at which they were vaccinating adults over the past week. These include 3 states (Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi) with vaccination coverage at or below 42%, the lowest in the nation, each of which is vaccinating at about half the rate of the U.S. overall. These are the states that are potentially the greatest distance from reaching sufficient levels of vaccine coverage and might be at risk for future outbreaks if levels are not increased significantly.
As with the U.S. overall, most states appear to be at or near their COVID-19 vaccine tipping points the point at which their supply is outstripping demand. While this may not be as big a concern for states that have already vaccinated large shares (> 60%) of their adult populations with at least one dose, about one in four states have not yet reached 50%, which is well below coverage levels likely to be needed to drive down the risk of outbreaks going forward. Furthermore, in these states, the pace of vaccination is below the national rate. The fact that most of these states are also seeing declines in the rate of first dose administration suggests that they will be important targets for focused efforts to generate increasing vaccine demand.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Empty vials of the Pfizer COVID19 vaccine at the Woods Cross High School pop-up clinic by Nomi Health, April 27, 2021. County and regional health districts are setting up vaccination clinics in high schools, to get the COVID-19 vaccine to 16- and 17-year-olds.
| May 5, 2021, 7:05 p.m.
| Updated: 10:35 p.m.
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Even as the number of Utahns fully vaccinated against COVID-19 approaches a million, the number of new cases jumped to nearly 500 on Wednesday and two more people died.
The number of Utahns hospitalized because of the coronavirus increased by 10, and there were eight more COVID-19 patients in intensive care than on Tuesday.
Vaccine doses administered in past day/total doses administered 18,687 / 2,223,511.
Utahns fully vaccinated 986,146.
Cases reported in past day 480.
Deaths reported in past day Two: A woman between the ages of 45-64 in Millard County, and a man 45-64 in Weber County.
Tests reported in past day 7,190 people were tested for the first time. A total of 15,569 people were tested.
Hospitalizations reported in past day 153. Thats 10 more than on Tuesday. Of those currently hospitalized, 62 are in intensive care units, up eight from Tuesday.
Percentage of positive tests Under the states original method, the rate is 6.7%. Thats about the same as the seven-day average of 6.6%.
The states new method counts all test results, including repeated tests of the same individual. Wednesdays rate was 3.1%, lower than the seven-day average of 3.5%.
[Read more: Utah is changing how it measures the rate of positive COVID-19 tests. Heres what that means.]
Totals to date 398,979 cases; 2,219 deaths; 16,278 hospitalizations; 2,582,182 people tested.
One of the states leaders in the fight against COVID-19 Dr. Rich Bullough, director of the Summit County Health Department is retiring in August.
Bullough announced his retirement this week at a meeting of the countys board of health.
Bullough, who has worked in public health for 30 years and led the Summit County Health Department since September 2010, had been considering retirement earlier. But, he said in a statement that he was not able to move on to the next phase of my life until the pandemic was well along the continuum of being controlled in Summit County.
The county, he said, has made remarkable progress toward knocking this disease back in our community and towards a safe, gradual return to normal.
On March 14, 2020, state health officials announced that a doorman in a Park City bar had the first case of community spread of COVID-19 a case not explained by someone bringing the virus into Utah from out of state. Within hours, with the urging of Summit County health officials that visitors stay home, Park Citys two major ski destinations, Deer Valley and Park City Mountain Resort, announced they would end their seasons early to prevent further spread.
Bullough is a Utah native, and a longtime Summit County resident. Before taking the job of leading the countys health department, he worked as director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded programs for the Utah Department of Health, as a research fellow for the National Institutes of Health, and an adjunct professor at the University of Utah.
Public health is about a lot more than pandemic response, it is a foundation of equity in society, Bullough said in his statement. Clean air, water, food, and important behavioral and clinical programs are for everyone. A strong public health department will help us continue down the path of achieving equity in Summit County.
Haiti's success is not due to some innovative intervention against the virus. Most people have given up wearing masks in public on the streets of Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. And Haiti hasn't yet administered a single COVID-19 vaccine. Valerie Baeriswyl /AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Haiti's success is not due to some innovative intervention against the virus. Most people have given up wearing masks in public on the streets of Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. And Haiti hasn't yet administered a single COVID-19 vaccine.
Haiti has one of the lowest death rates from COVID-19 in the world.
As of the end of April, only 254 deaths were attributed to COVID-19 in Haiti over the course of the entire pandemic. The Caribbean nation, which often struggles with infectious diseases, has a COVID-19 death rate of just 22 per million. In the U.S. the COVID-19 death rate is 1,800 per million, and in parts of Europe. the fatality rate is approaching 3,000 deaths per million.
Haiti's success is not due to some innovative intervention against the virus. Most people have given up wearing masks in public. Buses and markets are crowded. And Haiti hasn't yet administered a single COVID-19 vaccine.
Dr. Jean "Bill" Pape says a combination of factors have kept the death rate so low.
Pape played a role similar to Dr. Anthony Fauci's in the U.S. The 74-year-old Haitian doctor served as the co-chair of a national commission in Haiti to deal with COVID-19, leading the country's effort to deal with the crisis. But the commission was dissolved earlier this year.
"The reason mainly is because we have very, very few cases of COVID," Pape says. The local health agency Pape heads, known as GHESKIO, actually shuttered its COVID-19 units last fall due to a lack of patients.
Last June, the country of 11 million was hit with a significant wave of infections. Hospital wards filled with COVID-19 patients. At the time, the country only had two places that could test for the virus, so the actual number of infections is unknown. Now, testing is far more available, but Pape says very few cases are detected each day.
"Sometimes it's two, sometimes zero, sometimes it's 20 cases," he says. "But we are not seeing a second wave, as we had thought would happen."
Pape says the country has pretty much gone back to the way life was pre-pandemic. Schools are open. Thousands of people packed the northern coastal Port-de-Paix for Carnival in February.
"Most people don't wear a mask," he says.
Not only have outdoor markets reopened; they were never completely closed.
Sheltering in place and working from home are luxuries most Haitians can't afford. As the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haitians on average earn less than $2,000 per year according to the U.N. And most, Pape says, have gone back to work.
"Because if they don't work, they don't eat, their family doesn't eat," he says.
Concern about the pandemic is so minimal that this April, when the World Health Organization-led COVAX program offered Haiti a shipment of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, the government rejected it.
Dr. Jacqueline Gautier is on the national technical advisory group on COVID-19 vaccination.
She says ordinary Haitians and people in the medical community have heard reports of rare but severe side effects from the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe, and they're in no rush to get that shot.
"Because COVID did not impact us as badly," she says, "people don't think it [the vaccine] is worth it actually."
Gautier is also the director of the St. Damien Pediatric Hospital on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
The pandemic may have had less of an impact in Haiti, she says, because it's a young country. The average age is 23. COVID-19 infections tend to be less severe in younger people. It's also possible, she says, that a significant number of people were infected by the virus last summer, showed no symptoms and built up immunity. Also houses tend to be open with plenty of ventilation air flow can knock the pathogen out of the picture.
Whatever the reason, she says, COVID-19 hasn't become a daily concern for most Haitians.
"Also there are many other major problems the country is facing," she says. "So people don't see COVID as our major as a major problem for us. And who can blame them?"
The daily problems facing Haiti are many. There's poverty, political instability, wild fluctuations in the value of the local currency, corruption, armed gangs. Diarrhea remains a major killer of children.
"And kidnappings!" Gautier exclaims. "They are really a huge problem for the country."
So Gautier was fairly sure that Haiti had dodged the COVID-19 bullet.
Then she saw the catastrophic COVID-19 wave in India, coming after a span of time when it seemed the country had been spared the worst of the virus. Now she worries that a deadly surge may be in Haiti's future, too.
"We don't know," she says. "This disease, it is full of surprises."
President Joe Biden (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Student loan borrowers will have received at least $90 billion of student loan forgiveness due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Heres what you need to know.
President Joe Biden and Congress may be debating the future of student loan cancellation, including who, if anyone, will cancel student loan debt and how much, if any, student loan forgiveness there will be. Amidst this ongoing debate, its important to highlight that more than $90 billion of student loans will be cancelled through September 30, 2021. How is this possible? Lets explore.
Under the Cares Act the $2.2 trillion stimulus package Congress enacted several temporary benefits for student loan borrowers, including:
These student loan benefits were scheduled to expire on September 30, 2020. However, President Donald Trump extended this student loan relief twice until January 31, 2021. When Biden became president, Biden extended this student loan relief through September 30, 2021. While this student loan relief is expected to end September 30, 2021, its possible that Biden could extend student loan relief beyond this date.
The U.S. Department of Education released data that confirmed student loan borrowers collectively have saved approximately $5 billion each month since student loan payments have been paused and interest hasnt accrued. Between now and September 30, 2021, student loan borrowers will save another $25 billion. That represents a major savings for student loan borrowers.
Its important to clarify what this means. First, this student loan cancellation applies only to federal student loans owned by the U.S. Department of Education. Second, there is no direct one-time student loan cancellation of existing student loan debt. Rather, this student loan cancellation is due to student loan borrowers not having to pay interest during the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, consider this student loan forgiveness for interest that wont accrue on your principal balance. That might not feel as exciting as one-time student loan cancellation of your existing student loan balance, but the amount can be significant. Why? Effectively, from March 2020 to September 30, 2021, student loan borrowers will have zero interest added to their federal student loans for 19 months. Consider this future student loan forgiveness (from the student loan interest you wont be paying) rather than current student loan forgiveness.
Its estimated, according to Yahoo Finance, that student loan borrowers have saved $2,000 on average.
The $90 billion of student loan forgiveness isnt the only student loan debt that has been cancelled during the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, Biden already has cancelled $2.3 billion of student loans. (You can learn if you qualify for the $2.3 billion of student loan forgiveness here). First, Biden cancelled $1 billion of student loans for 72,000 student loan borrowers and second, he cancelled another $1.3 billion of student loans for 41,000 borrowers with total and permanent disability. America has reacted to Bidens student loan cancellation in different ways. In addition to direct student loan cancellation and student loan forgiveness due to no interest, student loan borrowers also have benefitted in another way during Covid-19 pandemic. For example, student loan borrowers who are pursuing public service loan forgiveness got credit for making a monthly student loan payment, even if they didnt actually make one. This is also a significant benefit because student loan borrowers potentially got 1.5 years of student payments counted toward the requirement of 10 years of student loan payments (120 monthly payments). This student loan cancellation is independent of any one-time student loan cancellation. If Congress or the president enacts student loan cancellation, it would be incremental to the student loan forgiveness that will continue through September 30, 2021.
As you evaluate your options for student loan repayment, make sure you consider these potential options:
