Governor Tom Wolf has announced that the Opioid Disaster Declaration he signed in January will be extended for another 90 days.
“While we’ve made progress on a number of fronts during the first 90 days of the disaster declaration, we know that we still have more work to do to stem the tide of this public health crisis.”
The Disaster Declaration allows for swift and decisive action in order to get people dealing with addiction into treatment more quickly and prevent more deaths. 13 initiatives introduced during those 90 days will continue without interruption and additional initiatives will be introduced to help those dealing with opioid use disorder.
Wolf said he was pleased with the progress that has been made through actions like expanding access to the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program as well as the creation of the Opioid Data Dashboard to make resources available to the public. According to Wolf, that work needs to continue.
“We are going to continue to use this declaration to further our ‘all hands on deck’ approach to creating a collaborative, multi-front effort to stop this scourge in its tracks.”
Governor Wolf is also encouraging passage of Senate Bill 1001 to allow the Secretary of Health to declare a public health emergency which would provide for a more streamlined emergency resource response.
