Husch Blackwell’s Wakaba Tessier and Erica Ash have published a post on Husch Blackwell’s Byte Back privacy blog detailing a new announcement from the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that relaxes the HIPAA Security Rule in response to the COVID-19 crisis, expanding on our previous discussion on the government’s expansion of telehealth services. The primary effect of OCR’s announcement is that regulators under certain conditions will now waive penalties for HIPAA violations against healthcare providers that see patients through non-public communication applications that do not meet the HIPAA Security Rule during the nationwide public health emergency.