CDC relaxes Covid guidelines, allowing most people to ditch masks if hospitalization rates remain low
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed mask guidelines on Friday, allowing most people to drop their face coverings as long as Covid-19 hospitalization rates in their communities remain at low.
According to new CDC guidance, people should wear masks in indoor public areas, including schools, when there is a lot of virus circulation in their community that could overwhelm local hospitals. direction. More than 70% of Americans live in communities where wearing a mask is no longer recommended under new CDC guidance, because there are no serious threats to hospitals.
The CDC’s new focus on the impact of severe illness on hospitals marks a significant shift from the agency’s previous use of Covid infections as a key metric in issuing health guidance. community.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters on a Friday call: “Given the prevalence of immunity in populations, the overall risk of severe illness is now present. now lower. “This updated approach is focused on directing our prevention efforts toward protecting those at high risk of severe illness and preventing hospitals and healthcare systems from being overwhelmed.”
People can check if masks are recommended for their county at CDC website. According to the color coding system, people living in green particles with low Vibrancy do not need to wear masks. People who are at high risk and live in yellow counties where Covid levels are moderate should consult a doctor about wearing a mask. People living in red districts with high Covid levels should wear masks in public places in their homes and schools.
According to the new guidelines, masks will not be recommended for indoor use if the average new cases fall below 200 cases per 100,000 residents, there are fewer than 10 Covid hospitalizations per 100,000 people in the past week, and Covid patients are recovering. less than 10% available. hospital beds, based on a seven-day average. If cases exceed 200 per 100,000 people, then masks will be recommended indoors if the number of new weekly Covid hospitalizations exceeds 10 per 100,000 people, and patients occupy 10% or more of hospital beds, based on a seven-day average, according to new CDC guidelines.
New York and California lifted mask regulations for indoor public places earlier this month as infections subsided, raising questions about whether the CDC would change its guidance.
The CDC made a major change to mask-wearing guidelines last July 2021 as delta variation was sweeping the United States. At the time, the CDC recommended that people wear masks in indoor public places, regardless of immunization status, in areas of the United States where transmission of the virus is high.
Guidelines from the summer remained in place as the more contagious omicron variant displaced the delta in December, causing the largest wave of infections since the pandemic began. However, scientists and public health officials later discovered that omicrons in general do not cause disease in people like delta. As infections rose to unprecedented levels, hospitalizations and deaths did not increase at the same rate.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, the US is reporting an average of about 75,000 new cases per day over seven days, down 91% from the pandemic record of more than 800,000 daily average cases seen on that day. January 15.
Hospitalizations have also plummeted, to about 57,500 Covid patients in the US as of Thursday, from a high of more than 159,000 on January 20, based on seven-day average data from the Department of Health and Services. Human life. Covid’s daily death toll hit its highest level in nearly a year on February 1 at an average of more than 2,600 people a day and has since fallen to about 1,740, Hopkins data showed.
Correction: A previous version of this story misrepresented the data used to determine if people live in a community where masks are recommended. Data has been updated.
