The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may loosen its guidance on indoor masking as early as next week as Covid cases and hospitalizations continue to decline.
The agency is considering the number of severe cases and hospital capacity among other benchmarks before finalizing any new recommendations, according to CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky.
‘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 told reporters on Wednesday.
The US is averaging about 147,000 Covid cases per day, a 40 percent decrease from last week, Walensky said during a White House Covid-19 response briefing.
The current seven-day average of about 9,500 hospital admissions is a decrease of about 28 percent from the previous week. Average daily deaths are down about 9 percent, to 2,200 each day.
In recent weeks a number of Democratic governors have announced plans to lift mask mandates come the end of February or early March, and many private businesses have shared they are following suit. Coachella, the major music festival held in California, shared this week that it will not require concert-goers to wear masks or provide proof of vaccination or a negative test.
‘I know everyone is anxious to move beyond this pandemic and some of the ways we have had to change how we live over the last two years,’ Walensky said. ‘We all share the same goal: to get to the point where Covid-19 is no longer disrupting our daily lives.’
The change in guidance could come as early as next week.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical advisor, said the possible new guidelines were sensible given the current trajectory of the virus in the states.
Each state making changes to their own mask mandates is ‘entirely understandable,’ Fauci said during an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday. ‘At the local level, there is a strong feeling of need to get back to normality.’
The CDC currently recommends universal indoor masking in areas with greater risk of transmission, which can be determined by the number of cases per 100,000 and the test positivity rate. Most counties in the US fall below that criteria, according to CDC data.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page
from News – Metro https://ift.tt/6ZA598L
0 Comments