Butler County commissioners voted unanimously to end the county's COVID-19 emergency declaration Wednesday.
Commissioner Leslie Osche said because of declining COVID-19 case counts and high vaccination rates, the county no longer needed the money to fund mass vaccination clinics.
"We maintained that declaration in order to ensure that we would be able to draw on the dollars from PEMA and FEMA that were available to maintain the vaccination clinics in collaboration with Butler Health System," she said. "We've been able to close the mass clinic that was located at Clearview Mall. The hospital has moved back to their location, and certainly the number of cases has dropped significantly."
Data shows Butler County has had five or fewer new COVID-19 cases per day in the last week. Nearly half of the county's residents are fully vaccinated.
Osche said commissioners will continue to keep an eye on case counts, but will now fully turn their attention to recovery.
"Making sure that the business community and our healthcare community can recover and our municipality, anybody that's faced any sort of financial impact, we also have to consider," she said.
The emergency declaration order started in March 2020.