CDC's New Mask Guidelines Says Most Americans No Longer Required To Wear Them Indoors
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in new masking guidelines released Friday afternoon, will no longer recommend masks in most indoor locations, including schools.
The CDC has developed new equations for evaluating risk and will now use a three-tiered, color-coded system.
Looking ahead to the next normal, the Biden administration is loosening mask-wearing guidelines for most Americans.
"We're in a stronger place today as a nation with more tools to protect ourselves and communities from COVID-19," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.
The CDC says it's switching to a new metric to determine when face masks are recommended in indoor public settings depending on COVID-19 case counts, hospitalizations, and hospital capacity.
The most recent guidelines recommended masking for roughly 95% of the country. With the new policy, it's now closer to 30%.
Masks are now advised for communities in red with a high burden on health care systems.
"I think it just kind of depends on the place and the amount of people and how safe I feel in that environment," one woman said.
The new guidance marks a shift from focusing on daily infections and community transmission to looking at the overall situation, now with more of an emphasis on hospitalizations, and hospital capacity.
"We have more and more people and more and more immunity in the population, we want to make sure we're focusing on severe disease because we do want to prevent severe disease," Walensky said. "We want to prevent hospitalizations. We want to prevent our hospitals from becoming overwhelmed, so our metrics were really with that in mind -- how much severe disease is happening?"
With the new color-coded map, much of the Philadelphia region is in the low or medium level, meaning masks aren't recommended for most people.
"Rolling back the mask mandate before we hit the metrics puts us at risk of going back," Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole said.
That was the health commissioner on Feb. 12. The department had no reaction to the new CDC guidance released Friday, saying the response levels are reviewed every Monday.
Philadelphia remains the only location in the region that still has an indoor mask mandate. They've been eliminated in all three states.
