USDA intends to use all available program flexibilities and contingencies to serve our program participants across our 15 nutrition programs. We have already begun to issue waivers to ease program operations and protect the health of participants.
FNS intends to issue updated SNAP – Emergency Allotments guidance to provide benefits to certain eligible households, including those receiving SNAP benefits at the statutory maximum, that were previously deemed ineligible for emergency allotments by USDA.
FNS issued eight child nutrition programs off-site monitoring fact sheets to assist states and sponsors in conducting off-site monitoring of child nutrition programs during the pandemic. These documents include a fact sheet that has background information on all programs, as well as separate facts sheets for state and local operators for each program.
Select from the following states to see all of the COVID-19 waivers issued for USDA Foods programs.
USDA Foods Disaster Household Distribution
Under a Presidential Declaration of a National Emergency, FNS may approve state requests for Disaster Household Distributions for targeted areas to meet specific needs when traditional channels of food are unavailable and not being replenished on a regular basis. DHD provides boxed foods to households using existing inventories of USDA-purchased foods.
Under Families First Coronavirus Response Act, FNS is allowing states during unanticipated school closures to waive the requirement in the summer feeding programs that “open site” meal service is limited to areas with at least half of the children in the area are in low-income households.
The attached is guidance to states in implementing Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020, which provides for the issuance of emergency allotments (supplements) based on a public health emergency declaration by the Secretary of Health and Human Services under section 319 of the Public Health Service Act related to an outbreak of COVID-19 when a state has also issued an emergency or disaster declaration