New C.D.C. Guidelines Suggest 70 Percent of Americans Can Stop Wearing Masks
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proposed a new strategy to help communities across the country survive the coronavirus and return to some version of everyday life.
The new guidelines suggest that 70 percent of Americans can now stop wearing masks and no longer need to practice social distancing or avoid crowded spaces.
Recommendations no longer depend solely on the number of cases in a community to determine the need for restrictions such as masks. Instead, they direct counties to look at three metrics to assess their risk of exposure to the virus: new Covid-related hospital admissions in the previous week, the percentage of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients, and new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people in the last week.
Based on these three factors, counties can calculate whether the risk to their residents is low, medium, or high, according to the agency, and only in high-risk areas should everyone wear a mask. But unvaccinated people must wear masks even in low-risk areas. The agency has approved universal mask-wearing in schools since July, regardless of the level of virus in the community. Still, new guidelines recommend mask-wearing in schools only in high-risk districts.
New recommendations are being released as the coronavirus recedes across the country. The number of cases has fallen to levels not seen before the surge of the Omicron variant, and hospitalizations have plummeted. About 58,000 people are hospitalized with Covid across the country, but the number has dropped by about 44 percent in the past two weeks.
Several experts said the new guidelines are in line with the current situation in the country. While the number of cases across the country is still high, “we’re already past the surge,” said Lynsey Marr, an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech. “We no longer need to work in emergency mode.”
But many places have already lifted pandemic restrictions. Most states have loosened mask rules, and some, like New Jersey, have announced plans to raise the requirement even in schools. Others are poised to lift the mandatory use of masks indoors in the coming weeks. The CDC’s official recommendation could impact more cautious areas.
According to previous CDC criteria, 95 percent of counties are considered high risk in the United States. The agency said that under the new criteria, less than 30 percent of Americans live in high-risk areas.
The new set of guidelines gives people a framework to adapt precautions as virus levels change, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, told reporters Friday.
“We want to give people a break from things like disguises when our levels are low, and then be able to call on them again if things get worse in the future,” she said. “We have to be ready, and we have to be ready for whatever comes next.”
She added that those who are particularly vulnerable due to their age, health status, or profession could take extra precautions, regardless of the level of risk in their community.
Dr. Marr said that the availability of high-quality masks, such as N95 respirators, allows people at high risk to continue to protect themselves even if those around them are not taking precautions.
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February 25, 2022, 5:12 pm ET
She added that it was good that the agency would continue to track cases because hospitals could be two to three weeks behind. “By the time the hospitals are full, it’s too late,” she said. But Dr. Walensky said the CDC scientists tested the models with data from previous spikes to confirm that the new risk calculation method would detect points at an early stage.
The Omicron surge made it clear that because so many Americans have immunity to the virus through vaccination or prior exposure, counties could see high numbers of cases but relatively few issues associated with severe illness. Public health experts say that the new recommendations reflect this reality and allow for a more resilient approach to living with the virus. “It just didn’t feel right that the whole country was the same shade of red,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.
While a growing number of political leaders, public health experts, and ordinary citizens now support easing restrictions – at least temporarily – others are still wary. They note that millions of people in the United States, including children under the age of 5, and billions of people worldwide remain unvaccinated, making the emergence of a dangerous new variant not only possible but likely.
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New CDC structure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released new guidance to help counties determine when and where people should wear masks, practice social distancing and avoid crowded spaces.
The CDC and the Biden administration have prematurely declared victory before, including last spring when they told vaccinated Americans they could ditch masks and celebrate “freedom summer,” only to see the Delta option cause hospitalizations to rise again and deaths.
The White House is working on a pandemic exit strategy to help Americans live with the virus. But Dr. Valensky just said two weeks ago that it was not yet the time to cancel mask mandates. And some officials at the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services are nervous about the leadership change.
Some public health experts have also objected to the loosening of restrictions, noting that the country is seeing about 1,900 Covid-related deaths every day, children under five still don’t have affordable vaccines, and a significant number of Americans remain at high risk of – for the coronavirus: their age, health status, or occupation.
The agency’s new guidelines do not cover whether or how long people who test positive for the virus should self-isolate, said Dr. Robbie Sikka, who leads the Covid-19 Sport and Society, Task Force. This organization monitors the safety of professional sports teams. . .
A study released by the CDC on Friday found that about half of those who test positive remained contagious after five days — the length of isolation currently recommended by the agency. “If people are isolated for five days, or worse, we just let people go, maybe we have the potential for an increase in cases,” Dr. Sikka said.
Even people who don’t become seriously ill can suffer long-term consequences from the infection, said Zoe McLaren, a health policy expert at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “We are pursuing pandemic policy on the assumption that the massive infection that occurred during the Omicron wave has little to no public health consequences, but there is increasing evidence that Covid infection often has persistent health consequences,” she said. She.
In an open letter to elected officials, a panel of 400 public health and education experts against the move to remove the mask indoors demands, saying it is “premature and threatens to put children, their school communities and their families at greater risk of sickness, disability, and death.” Now the challenge is that we certainly need to consider hospital capacity. Still, we also need to assess vaccination coverage among children among adults,” said Sonali Rajan, an expert on school health programs at Columbia University and one of the authors of the letter.
According to Joseph Allen, a building quality expert at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, the CDC should ideally continue to refine its community risk assessment models, including incorporating wastewater analysis signals and other approaches. “One thing is clear: there is no bright boundary for any of these metrics,” Dr. Allen said. “I hope the CDC avoids this trap again.” Zolan Kanno-Youngs made a report.
