Masks: As some states relax, CDC director says it’s not yet time to change guidance nationwide

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that despite encouraging trends in coronavirus case rates that have prompted Democratic governors in several states, including New Jersey and Connecticut, to relax key mitigation methods, the country as a whole has not reached that point.

“We’re not there yet,” Walensky said at a White House briefing.

Instead, Walensky said, “We continue to recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission. That’s much of the country right now, in public indoor settings.”

The current seven-day daily average of cases is about 247,300 cases per day, according to CDC data, a decrease of about 44 percent from the previous week. Hospitalizations have also dropped by about 25 percent, while death rates, which lag behind those indicators, have increased by about 3 percent over the previous week to reach what Walensky called “a tragic new mark of 900,000 deaths in this country from covid-19.”

At the briefing, Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, emphasized that booster shots are “critically important” to reducing hospitalizations and deaths and said that the next step in vaccinations for children under 5 would progress only after full review of the vaccine’s safety and efficacy in that age group. He said the need for a fourth dose would depend on data.

“You measure laboratory phenomenon, but you measure the real-world data on the efficacy in preventing, for example, hospital visits as well as hospitalizations,” Fauci said. “And I believe that you’re going to be hearing data about that as the data become available.”

Walensky described the CDC’s ongoing surveillance methods, including wastewater and genomic surveillance as well as monitoring the safety and efficacy of vaccines. She said that any change in guidance would be based on data from these monitoring systems.

“I know there will come a time when we move from a phase of crisis to a point where covid-19 is not disrupting our daily lives,” she said. “And as we all look forward to this next step, I want to instill in everyone that moving forward from this pandemic will be a process that’s led by our surveillance and our data.” ...

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