Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
New CDC Guidelines Mean Most Americans Can Go Maskless In Public
AP: CDC: Many Healthy Americans Can Take A Break From Masks
Most Americans live in places where healthy people, including students in schools, can safely take a break from wearing masks under new U.S. guidelines released Friday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlined the new set of measures for communities where COVID-19 is easing its grip, with less of a focus on positive test results and more on what’s happening at hospitals. The new system greatly changes the look of the CDC’s risk map and puts more than 70% of the U.S. population in counties where the coronavirus is posing a low or medium threat to hospitals. Those are the people who can stop wearing masks, the agency said. (Johnson and Stobbe, 2/25)
Stat: CDC Issues Long-Awaited New Guidance On When To Wear Masks
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued long-awaited new guidance Friday on when Americans should consider wearing masks to protect themselves against Covid-19. Under the new guidance, roughly 70% of the U.S. population can now contemplate removing their masks. The guidance lays out a system that designates individual counties as being at either low, medium, or high risk from Covid-19. Roughly 62.6% of counties — home to 71.7% of Americans — fall into the low- and medium-risk categories. The new system moves beyond sheer numbers of new cases to look at how well the health care system in each county is holding up. The idea, the CDC said, is to focus on minimizing severe disease and ensuring that hospitals are able to cope with Covid cases while still delivering standard care. (Branswell, 2/25)
The New York Times: Find The C.D.C.'s New Pandemic Guidance For Your Area
The C.D.C.’s new tool allows users to identify their state and then choose their county. That yields a color-coded gauge — green for low risk, yellow for medium and orange for high — along with the relevant guidance. All results offer reminders of the importance of vaccinations and boosters, measures that have kept the Omicron wave from inflicting a far more devastating toll in serious illness, hospitalization and death. (Downes, 2/26)
Also —
The Washington Post: What You Need To Know About The CDC’s New Coronavirus Guidance
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new framework for dealing with the coronavirus Friday that eases recommendations on mask-wearing for much of the country — a move that arrives as many state and local officials had already taken such steps. The guidelines illustrate that after more than two years of living with the virus, many communities have gained greater protection against severe illness through vaccination, treatments, better testing and higher-quality masks. (Stead Sellers and Rizzo, 2/25)
AP: Some Americans Welcome New CDC Mask Guidance, Others Wary
Many Americans, including parents of school children, have been clamoring for an end to masking while others remain wary that the pandemic could throw a new curveball. Now, states, cities and school districts are assessing Friday’s guidance to determine whether it’s safe to stop mask-wearing — long after others threw out such mandates and many Americans ignored them. (Babwin and Webber, 2/26)
Axios: A Case For (Some) Continued Masking
Public health experts are trying to make the case for keeping masks on even though the CDC no longer recommends them in many public places. In the push to return to normal, there are lingering concerns about the consequences of letting our guard down, particularly when millions of immunocompromised Americans remain vulnerable to COVID and kids under 5 still don't qualify for vaccinations. (Reed, 2/28)
And in research on how masks helped battle omicron —
The New York Times: Masking And Isolating Reduced Omicron Spread In Homes, C.D.C. Finds
The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has been so contagious that it may have seemed a foregone conclusion that if one person in a household became ill, other people living there would catch the virus, too. But that turns out to be less certain: A small study of households by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Friday found that when the first person infected wore a mask and stayed in a separate room at least part of the time, the risk of other household members contracting the virus became markedly lower. (Mueller, 2/25)
