January 11, 2021

COVID-19 CONTINUITY OF OPERATIONS UPDATE

Effects on Requalification Efforts for Periodicals Publications

The Postal Service understands that the Periodicals industry continues to have a difficult time renewing requester and subscriber/paid publications due to the COVID-19 outbreak.To address this, in an April 2020 Industry Update, we temporarily extended expiration dates of all legitimate requests and extended legitimate subscribers for six (6) months, effective from January 15, 2020.In July we extended this another six (6) months.

Due to continuing issues with COVID-19, we are extending this temporary exception to the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) 207.4.2 and DMM 207.7.6 mailing standards until July 1, 2021.This new temporary extension is available until July 1, 2021 to legitimate requesters or legitimate subscribers.

This should allow publishers to count requests or subscriptions that either expired or would have expired between January 15, 2020 and July 1, 2021 as legitimate requesters or legitimate subscribers/paid publications. This new temporary extension includes renewals related to membership renewals. Please note that it is only applicable to legitimate subscribers and legitimate requesters who continued to receive the publications during this period.

This is a temporary exception to DMM 207.4.2 and DMM 207.7.6 and will be reevaluated prior to the July 1, 2021 expiration date.

If you have any questions, please email PCSC@usps.gov.