Masks: The bar in the U.S. for reimposing mask mandates is getting higher and higher

New York City raised its coronavirus alert level last week in response to rising cases, triggering a recommendation - but not a requirement - that people wear masks in public indoor settings. In Philadelphia, officials reimposed a mask mandate last month after cases rose, only to scrap the rule four days after it took effect.

The decisions by the Democratic-run cities illustrate how mask mandates are falling out of favor with American public health authorities in the third year of the pandemic and the bar to bring them back is getting higher, even in places where the requirements were long embraced as a proven way to reduce the spread of coronavirus.

"They are responding to the public," said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. "People are really fed up with all of these restrictions."

The shift away from mask mandates in blue cities and states has been months in the making, and they are not coming back even as cases of the highly transmissible BA.2 coronavirus variant rise. Democratic governors urged residents to learn to live with a virus that isn't going away when they lifted mask mandates in quick succession in February and March. The spread of BA.2 and other subvariants of omicron - which are even more transmissible than their highly contagious predecessor - on the East Coast presented an early test of that commitment.

But the latest uptick hasn't turned into major surges and has not resulted in overrun hospitals. There was little appetite to impose mask mandates proactively, as Philadelphia had done, in the event cases abruptly spiked and admissions soared. ...

But it's too soon to declare government mask mandates a relic of the past. Under a new CDC framework, people should still wear masks when their communities are considered high risk. But the definition of high risk has shifted to emphasize hospitalizations and the strain on the health care system, rather than a high volume of cases.

Officials say mask mandates would probably be tied to cases again under a dreaded scenario where a highly contagious variant that evades vaccine protection and causes more severe disease emerges. ...