CDC: Even vaccinated people should wear masks indoors in parts of U.S. with ‘substantial’ COVID spread
The masks are back.
Even fully vaccinated people should wear face masks indoors under revised public health guidance rolled out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday amid growing concern over the extremely contagious delta variant of COVID-19.
The new CDC guidelines — which reverse a policy from just two months ago — recommend that parts of the U.S. with “high or substantial” coronavirus transmissibility rates reinstate mask mandates for public indoor settings, like grocery stores, restaurants and bars, regardless of people’s vaccination status.
The CDC is also recommending that all teachers, staff, students and visitors at K-12 schools across the country mask up indoors.
“We must take every step we can to stop the delta variant and end this pandemic,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, told reporters on a conference call.
Most parts of the nation — including New York City and State — are currently seeing high or substantial levels of coronavirus transmissibility because of the delta variant, with nearly all new infections being reported in unvaccinated individuals.
Officials in New York did not immediately act on the CDC update, though Gov. Cuomo said he intends to keep “following the science.”
“New Yorkers beat back COVID before — going from the highest positivity rate on the globe to one of the lowest — by staying smart, following the science, and having each other’s backs, and that’s exactly what we’ll keep doing in this next phase of the pandemic,” Cuomo said in a statement. “We are reviewing the CDC’s new recommendations closely in consultation with federal and state health experts.”
A spokesman for Mayor de Blasio declined to comment after the CDC announcement.
But Hizzoner signaled earlier in the day that a resumption of indoor masking isn’t completely off the table for him while his main focus remains to boost the city’s flagging vaccination rates.
“Whatever happens with masks, I want to be as clear as I can be, the No. 1 tool, the No. 1 weapon, the No. 1 savior is vaccination,” the mayor said in his daily briefing. “We can talk about masks and figure out what makes sense to do about masks, but the thing that will save us is vaccination.”
De Blasio has also since previously mandated masks in all city schools ahead of the fall semester.
It remains to be seen how many other states will act on the CDC’s nonbinding mask recommendations.
Many Republican-led states have already pledged to not reinstate mask mandates even though the U.S. is now averaging more than 57,000 cases a day and 24,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations as of this week.
In New York City, local mask hawks who have pleaded with de Blasio for weeks to reinstate an indoor mandate seized on the CDC update.
“CDC has just called for a return to indoor masking in parts of the U.S. where covid is surging. Let’s be clear: covid is surging in New York City,” tweeted City Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan), chairman of the Council’s Health Committee. “We need an indoor mask mandate renewed here ASAP.”
In May, the CDC said it was no longer necessary for vaccinated individuals to wear masks indoors as COVID-19 infection rates plummeted and vaccination rates ticked up.
But Walensky said in Tuesday’s briefing that the CDC is backpedaling because of a sharp slowdown in vaccinations, coupled with delta variant-driven spikes in infections among the inoculated.
Delta, which is believed to have originated in India, now accounts for eight of every 10 new COVID-19 cases in the U.S., according to the CDC.
Especially troubling is new research showing that the delta variant is far more likely than common COVID-19 strains to infect fully vaccinated individuals who can then spread it to others, Walensky said.
“This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendations,” she said.
Still, Walensky stressed that vaccination remains the most powerful weapon against COVID-19 in that it prevents even people infected with the delta variant from suffering symptoms and ending up in the hospital.
“What we really need to do to drive down these transmissions in areas of high transmission is to get more and more people vaccinated,” she said.
Though New York is not faring as badly as many other states, the city’s coronavirus test positivity rate reached 2.37% Tuesday, the highest in months, according to Health Department data.
Meantime, about 41% of the city’s population remains unvaccinated. On a national level, about 69% of U.S. adults have gotten at least one shot of the vaccine.
De Blasio earlier this week announced that all of the city’s municipal workers must either get vaccinated or submit to weekly coronavirus tests starting Sept. 13 in an effort to jack up immunization rates in the Big Apple.
Before the CDC’s mask update Tuesday, President Biden said he’s mulling outright mandating vaccinations for all federal employees.
“That’s under consideration right now,” he said at the White House. “We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated and they’re sowing enormous confusion.”
