The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unveiled on Friday relaxed COVID-19 guidelines, including for masking, a sign of the massive omicron outbreak abating and the administration’s desire to back away from emergency measures.
The new masking guidelines will focus less on case counts and more on measures of hospitalizations, a change that will result in the recommendation for masking being lifted in much of the country, whereas it was previously recommended almost everywhere.
Coronavirus cases are plummeting following the surge associated with the omicron variant, and the Biden administration said its focus is now on helping local and state governments make decisions on what best suits their local communities for contending with the pandemic.
The new guidelines divide the country by “COVID-19 Community Levels,” which are split into low, medium, and high settings. Each level is “determined by the higher of the new admissions and inpatient beds metrics, based on the current level of new cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days,” the CDC says. Masks aren’t recommended in areas that fall into the “low” category, while they are advised for people at higher risk in “medium” areas.
Up until now, the CDC had recommended masking for everyone in indoor public spaces, regardless of vaccination status, in areas with high transmission, covering 97% of counties across the country. The new map shared by the CDC shows much less of the country in high-risk communities, in which the agency recommends masking in indoor public spaces, including schools, regardless of vaccination status.
The change comes ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, set for Tuesday, during which some Democrats are urging him to convey a return to a sense of normalcy heading into the midterm elections.
Many red states have rejected mandating or recommending masks for months, including before the omicron surge began, and some Republican governors have argued that they do not help.
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CDC Director Rochelle Walensky previously said it was time to give the public a break on wearing masks now that cases are decreasing.
“We want to give people a break from things like mask-wearing when these metrics are better and then have the ability to reach for them again should things worsen,” Walensky said earlier this month.
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With the pandemic slowing down, Walensky also said there should be a renewed focus on non-COVID-19 patients in hospitals and whether they have room to help those with the coronavirus. “Our hospitals need to be able to take care of people with heart attacks and strokes. Our emergency departments can’t be so overwhelmed that patients with emergent issues have to wait in line,” Walensky said last week.
Since the start of the pandemic, 78,050,838 cases have been confirmed in the United States, with roughly 534,803,500 doses of COVID-19 vaccines having been administered in the U.S. and 252,276,680 people having received at least one dose, according to the World Health Organization.
