KDHE COVID-19 Updates for Community Partners 

Last Thursday, KDHE hosted a webinar for community partners to provide updates on COVID monitoring, vaccine expirations, and other emerging issues such as rabies, Mpox, and Reportable Infection Disease Dashboard. The key highlights for members to be aware of are: 

1. KDHE will utilize syndromic surveillance monitoring for COVID-19 and has stopped case investigations. 
2. Free testing programs are continuing. 
3. FDA gave approval on May 26^th to use Paxlovid for treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 in adults who are high risk and will be available at no cost to patients. 
4. HPOP reporting and ordering has found facilities are not consistently and correctly reporting their supplies and if they continue to do so, they will be at risk of their orders being cancelled or delayed. 
5. None of the currently authorized outpatient oral antivirals have expired, but facilities should continue to check shelf-life information here. 
6. Moderna bivalent COVID-19 vaccines for those 9 or older have received a shelf-life extension. Expiration does for each vaccine can be found: Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna, Novavax.  
7. Several COVID tests have been granted shelf-life extensions. The FDA posts updates for all brands on their website, or you can use BinaxNOW antigen test expiration look-up. 

Find a copy of the webinar slides here and Q&A responses from the webinar here.