The CDC said the new system will be useful in predicting future surges and urged communities with wastewater surveillance systems to use that data too. We’re still focusing on preventing death and illness.” I think this is taking us forward with a new direction going on in the pandemic,” Plescia said. Marcus Plescia of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. State health officials are generally pleased with the new guidance and “excited with how this is being rolled out,” said Dr. She said she’ll keep wearing a mask because she’s pregnant. In Pennsylvania, acting health secretary Keara Klinepeter urged “patience and grace” for people who choose to continue masking in public, including those with weakened immune systems. In a sign of the political divisions over masks, Florida’s governor on Thursday announced new recommendations called “Buck the CDC” that actually discourage mask wearing. Los Angeles on Friday began allowing people to remove their masks while indoors if they are vaccinated, and indoor mask mandates in Washington state and Oregon will be lifted in late March. Mask requirements already have ended in most of the U.S. Taking hospital data into account has turned some counties - such as Boulder County, Colorado - from high risk to low. How a county comes to be designated green, yellow or orange will depend on its rate of new COVID-19 hospital admissions, the share of staffed hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients and the rate of new cases in the community. Orange designates places where the CDC suggests masking should be universal. Yellow means people at high risk for severe disease should be cautious. In green counties, local officials can drop any indoor masking rules. The CDC is offering a color-coded map - with counties designated as orange, yellow or green - to help guide local officials and residents. “If we have continual masking orders, they might become a total joke by the time we really need them again.” And so I think it makes sense to give people a break from masking,” Noymer said. But it will help when the next wave of infection - a likelihood in the fall or winter - starts threatening hospital capacity again, he said. With many Americans already taking off their masks, the CDC’s shift won’t make much practical difference for now, said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. announcing plans to drop mask mandates amid declining COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths. That guidance has increasingly been ignored, however, with states, cities, counties and school districts across the U.S. As of this week, more than 3,000 of the nation’s more than 3,200 counties - greater than 95% - were listed as having substantial or high transmission under those measures. Some states, including Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, are at low to medium risk while others such as West Virginia, Kentucky, Florida and Arizona still have wide areas at high levels of concern.ĬDC’s previous transmission-prevention guidance to communities focused on two measures - the rate of new COVID-19 cases and the percentage of positive test results over the previous week.īased on those measures, agency officials advised people to wear masks indoors in counties where spread of the virus was deemed substantial or high. Anyone can go to the CDC website, find out the volume of disease in their community and make that decision.” “We want to make sure our hospitals are OK and people are not coming in with severe disease. Rochelle Walensky said in a news briefing. “Anybody is certainly welcome to wear a mask at any time if they feel safer wearing a mask,” CDC Director Dr. Germany appeals for reducing tensions over Taiwanīut with protection from immunity rising - both from vaccination and infection - the overall risk of severe disease is now generally lower, the CDC said.
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