The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its mask guidelines Friday — scrapping the recommendation for areas currently including New York City — as the agency acknowledged the risk of severe COVID-19 cases has gone down.
Instead of looking only at confirmed case counts, the CDC said it will consider the risk the virus poses to individual communities based largely on the number of severe cases and hospital admissions, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said at a press conference.
“We are in a stronger place today as a nation to protect communities from COVID-19,” Walensky said. “We want to give people a break from things like mask-wearing when risks are low.”
The agency will give each county in the US a “low, medium or high” risk ranking based on the new metrics, and advise on mask recommendations accordingly.
Wearing a mask is no longer recommended in indoor public spaces, including schools, in low-risk areas, currently including New York City and much of upstate, the CDC said. Masking up is still advised in high risk communities, and people in areas of medium risk should consider wearing them, the CDC said.
But Mayor Eric Adams said Friday the city was not yet ready to lift indoor mask mandates in schools — insisting the measure was likely just “around the corner.”
“The numbers are moving in the right direction,” Adams said in an appearance on PIX11.“We’re going to follow the science because remember, we can’t allow our city to close down again out of our anticipation, right?”
Gov. Kathy Hochul also refused earlier this month to scrap indoor mask mandates in schools.
A total of 23 percent of US counties are currently considered low risk, 39 percent are considered medium and 37 percent are considered high.
The CDC plans to update county-by-county safety rankings weekly on its website, where people can now view the risk level of their community — color-coated green, yellow or orange — on the CDC’s website, when considering whether to mask up.
Under the new guidelines, most US counties no longer meet the threshold at which indoor masking in public is recommended.
Previously, masks were recommended for people who live in areas that have substantial or high transmission, which accounted for about 95 percent of US counties.
“[With Omicron] many of our infections did not result in severe disease, and so it was in that context that we made the pivot,” Wallensky said Friday.
Following the arrival of the Omicron variant at the end of last year, confirmed cases of the virus skyrocketed across the country, prompting most states to reinstate indoor mask requirements but as cases and hospitalizations continue to fall, many have scrapped the directive.
Ultimately, the CDC’s guidelines are only data-driven suggestions and mask mandates are officially made by local elected officials.
The loosened guidelines come as the Biden administration shifts its focus from preventing all infections and moves to manage the virus as an endemic problem.
While the Omicron variant is highly transmissible, the risk of severe disease is far lower than previous strains, especially among the vaccinated and boosted.
Walensky has previously signaled a change was coming.
“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,” she said recently.
