Research / Health & Human Services
Policy Analysis | April 2021
Coronavirus Impacts on State Legislatures: 2021
Last updated: April 15, 2021
As of April 15, 2021, approximately 2.9 million people worldwide, including 548,000 Americans, have died from the coronavirus pandemic. On December 11, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an emergency use authorization for Pfizer/BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine. On December 18, 2020, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for the Moderna vaccine for use in individuals 18 or older. On February 27, 2021, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed a recommended schedule for states to administer these vaccines. As of April 15, approximately 123 million vaccinations have been administered in the United States. Against this backdrop, Southern legislatures are convening for their 2021 legislative sessions.
This SLC Policy Analysis, updated as new measures are implemented, tracks the special measures that Southern legislatures are adopting in order to meet safely in 2021.
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Policy Analysis | March 2021
Unemployment in the SLC Region Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic
Disclaimer: On November 30, 2020, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the U.S. Department of Labor inaccurately reported the number of people filing for unemployment benefits during the pandemic. Due to the historic number of individuals filing for benefits beginning in March 2020, and states' frequent backlogs processing the claims, the traditional method of reporting unemployment did not accurately capture the number of unique individuals claiming benefits, according to the GAO report. For example, if a person filed for five weeks of benefits in a given week, the Department of Labor typically counted it as five separate claimants, not one. This method of reporting normally is a reliable proxy for the number of unique individuals claiming benefits, but it did not account for states' processing delays and claimants retroactively applying for benefits during the pandemic. While the absolute figures may not be accurate, the trend levels remain helpful for understanding the overall employment outlook.
This SLC Policy Analysis was concluded on March 26, 2021. For additional information regarding the Department of Labor data, please contact Roger Moore at rmoore@csg.org.
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Policy Analysis | March 2021
Spread of COVID-19 within Regions of the United States
Over the course of a year, this SLC Policy Analysis tracked the proliferation of COVID-19 amongst The Council of State Government's four regions, using data collected and published by The COVID Tracking Project. On March 7, 2021, updates to the data hosted by the project were discontinued and, consequently, this analysis of the data on a regional basis was concluded.
A multitude of governmental, private and nonprofit research entities are closely monitoring the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) – the novel coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)1,2 – across the United States on city, county, state and national levels. Originally, at the outset of the pandemic, a limited amount of research existed for how the virus circulated on a regional basis.3
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SLC Human Services & Public Safety Committee
2020-2021
Chair
Senator
Katrina Shealy
South Carolina
2020-2021
Vice Chair
Representative
Fredrick J. Love
Arkansas
Immediate
Past Chair
(former) Senator
Doug Overbey
Tennessee
Ensuring the public's general welfare and protection are among states' most pressing concerns, with both areas constituting considerable shares of state budgets. The SLC Human Services & Public Safety Committee has a broad agenda, which takes into account the challenges states face in the areas of human services and corrections, as well as policies and programs that address them. The committee frequently undertakes assessments of pressing health issues including the national opioid crisis, organ donations and long-term care, as well as various corrections issues such as aging inmate populations, female offenders and mental health parity in prisons.
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