Face masks became a crucial public health tool during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the rules and recommendations around masks continue to change.
Whether or not you need to wear a mask — and the type of mask you should wear — depends on the impact COVID-19 is having in your community at the time, according to new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now, as cases are declining after the massive omicron surge, people in many areas of the country can stop wearing masks indoors, the CDC recommendations say.
But, in the future, the mask recommendations in your area may change again if cases and, crucially, hospitalizations start to climb back up.
The latest CDC guidelines on masking and COVID-19
The CDC adjusted its recommendations for masks last week. Using new metrics that rely more on the coronavirus burden on the health care system and rely less on the number of COVID-19 cases, more than two-thirds of people in the country are now considered OK to go without masks in indoor public settings.
Now, when community COVID-19 levels are low, the CDC says people can decide to use a mask based on "personal preference, informed by your individual level of risk."
If your community has a medium COVID-19 level, people who are immunocompromised or have a high risk for severe illness due to the virus, the CDC says you should talk to your health care provider about taking extra precautions. That might include wearing a mask or respirator. At this level, those who live with or interact with people who are at a higher risk for severe COVID-19 should consider getting tested before having close contact with those vulnerable individuals.
At high community COVID-19 levels, the public should wear a well-fitting mask in indoor situations, including schools. That goes for pretty much everyone, regardless of vaccination status. People who are immunocompromised or otherwise at high risk for severe COVID-19 should wear a mask that provides a higher level of protection, such as an N95 respirator.
“I do think that over the next few weeks, I think it’s going to be reasonable to lift mask mandates,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told TODAY recently. Infection numbers are going down, "hospital capacity has gotten better, deaths are going to get much better in the next few weeks," he said. All of that makes now a "reasonable time" to adjust our rules around masks.
For all levels, the CDC also recommends getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and getting tested if you develop symptoms of the infection.
Note that these community COVID-19 levels are different than the COVID-19 community transmission levels that the CDC used previously to recommend masking. And the new guidelines may not necessarily apply to all situations; more vulnerable settings like long-term care facilities and hospitals may still enforce mask use, the CDC says.
Wearing masks while traveling
The new guidelines, based on community COVID-19 levels, do not fundamentally change the CDC's recommendations for travel, the agency said.
For now, you are still required to wear a mask when using federal transportation, such as on airplanes. You should also still wear a mask when using public transportation, like subways or buses, and when in indoor travel settings, such as train stations and airports. In outdoor settings, like a bus stop, you don't need to wear a mask.
However, the TSA's mask mandate is set to expire on March 18, 2022. That mandate currently requires passengers to wear face masks on all transportation networks, including public transit such as commuter buses and railway systems, according to the Federal Transit Administration.
Wearing masks in schools
In many states, officials and school districts are lifting school mask mandates.
Looking at the new CDC guidance, schools don't need to implement masking — even indoors — when the local community COVID-19 level is low. When the community COVID-19 level increases to medium, the CDC guidelines recommend that schools consider adding precautions, such as screening testing. It's only at the high level of community COVID-19 that the CDC recommends masking in schools.
Whether or not children should continue to wear face masks even when the mandates expire will ultimately come down to the individual family's decision based on what's happening in their community as well as their own personal risk factors.
With children under 5 unable to get vaccinated, low rates of vaccination among kids who are eligible for the shots and new research suggesting the vaccine is less effective among 5- to 11-year-olds, many children in school may have less protection than adults.
“So, for now, it makes sense to have masks in school," Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health and professor in the department of infectious diseases at the Yale School of Medicine, told TODAY previously.
What type of mask should you wear?
The CDC recommends wearing the "most protective mask you can that fits well and that you will wear consistently."
That's because, while N95 and KN95-type respirators are generally considered to provide the highest level of protection against viral particles, they can also be the most uncomfortable to wear. But taking the mask on and off frequently — or wearing it without the proper snug fit — undercuts the protection it can provide.
"So you have to find the right balance,” Dr. Raed Dweik, pulmonologist, critical care specialist and chair of the Respiratory Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, told TODAY previously. If it's easier for you to keep a cloth mask or a surgical mask on for the entirety of your bus ride, that's likely to be a better option than an N95 that you can only wear comfortably for a few minutes at a time.
Keep in mind that, if you can't get your hands on a respirator, you can double-mask (by wearing a surgical mask underneath a cloth mask) or use something like a mask brace to make the face coverings you have access to more protective.
Will we need to keep wearing masks forever?
As the new CDC guidelines make clear, masks will come and go as the dynamics of the pandemic continue to ebb and flow.
When case numbers rise and health care systems begin to feel the burden, you should expect mask requirements to come back — especially in high-risk settings, like crowded indoor public areas. But when cases go down and hospitals are able to function more normally, the guidelines allow for us to relax some of the rules around masks.
Keeping masks as one option in our toolbox — along with vaccines and boosters — will help reduce the spread of the virus as we gradually enter what experts are calling the endemic phase of COVID-19. For some people, masks may become the norm during the annual cold and flu season, experts said previously.
Source: Read Full Article
