For nine days, the nation's opioid crisis was no longer considered a "public health emergency" after the Trump administration failed to renew a two-year-old declaration that expired last week.

An HHS spokesperson on Thursday night said that the lapse had been corrected. "This was a clerical error," the spokesperson said. "The public health emergency for opioids has been renewed."


President Donald Trump in October 2017 directed the health department to declare that the opioid epidemic was an emergency, a status that the administration touted as a necessary step to direct more resources toward the drug overdose crisis that was claiming the lives of more than 50,000 Americans per year. The emergency status must be renewed every 90 days.