As a string of states from California to New York move to relax or drop mask mandates, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Wednesday that the agency is not prepared to change it guidance on face coverings.
“We continue to recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission — that's much of the country right now — in public indoor settings,” Walensky said during a White House briefing. “And so we're, of course, taking a close look at this in real-time, and we're evaluating rates of transmission as well as rates of severe outcomes as we look at updating and reviewing our guidance.”
Walensky later added that hospitalizations and death rates remain high, so while current trends are encouraging, “we are not there yet.”
According to CDC data, 99% of U.S. counties still have high rates of coronavirus transmission. The seven-day average of daily cases is about 250,000, down about 44% from the previous week. Hospital admissions are doe about 25% to about 13,000 a day. And deaths are up slightly from last week to over 2,400 a day.
Despite such numbers, a growing number of states have responded to declining case rates by announcing plans to drop indoor mask mandates or mandates for schools — moves that put the Biden administration and public health officials in an awkward position.
“The tragic thing is that these are governors that would probably have followed the White House’s guidance,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner. “They wanted CDC input and asked for it, but without a clear timeline, at some point they had to decide that they couldn’t wait any more. The fault is not theirs, but the CDC’s and by extension, President Biden’s, which, with each passing day, is making itself less and less relevant.”
Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist who served on President Biden’s Covid-19 Advisory Board transition team, told The New York Times that the situation presents challenges for public health officials: “It’s highly variable across the country — how much transmission there is, what vaccination uptake has been — but the C.D.C. produces guidance for the entire country, so it makes sense for them to be cautious.”
