Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that only ten percent of Americans wear masks indoors, publicly, because they live in an area of ”high” risk from Covid, a drastic drop from last week when almost all Americans were recommended to wear masks before the agency updated the guidelines.
Updated recommendations that now assess hospitalization rates and capacity, rather than just everyday cases, are coming as Covid cases continue to decline in the United States and Americans are beginning to look at life after Covid.
America has an average of 57,020 cases of Covid each day, a 25% drop in the last week and a drop of over 90% of Omicron the jump peaked at 800,000 cases a day in mid-January.
Many states and cities were already throwing masks even before the CDC reviewed the guidelines last week. Hawaii is the only state in America that has not revoked its mask mandate or set a date in the coming weeks to do so. City-level employees in New York, San Francisco and Chicago have raised or eased mask orders, as well as against the backdrop of falling cases.
According to initial guidelines revealed last week, 30 percent of Americans live in an area where residents are advised to wear masks indoors. In just one week, that figure has dropped by a third, according to the CDC.
Last week, the CDC revised its COVID-19 risk assessment indicators and reduced the number of Americans living in high-risk areas from 95% to 30% (left). People in these areas are advised to wear a mask in closed public places. Updated data revealed that on Thursday, the number of Americans living in “high-risk areas” fell to just 10 percent, mainly concentrated in West Virginia and Kentucky (right)
Counties that still have mask recommendations from the CDC are largely grouped in West Virginia and Kentucky, two states that are among the national leaders in Covid hospitalization rates. West Virginia is the nation’s leader in hospitalization rates, with 35 out of every 100,000 people hospitalized with the virus each day. Kentucky has the third highest hospitalization rate – 23 per 100,000 residents per day.
No country has a mask mandate, and the CDC guidelines are non-binding. This means that people living in these counties will decide for themselves whether they want to follow the agency’s recommendations.
However, Americans are largely looking forward to leaving the pandemic behind. The CDC guidelines have been revised after weeks of pressure from government officials and Americans who are ready to return to normal life every day.
An AP-NORC A survey last month found that only 24 percent of Americans are still very concerned about themselves or someone in their family who will be infected with the virus.
This week was finally when the federal government moved after weeks of delaying the lifting of pandemic mandates.
In a statement on the state of the Union on Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced new plans for the United States to move forward and control the pandemic without the need for blockades or other potentially destructive mandates.
Biden announced that the country has increased its purchase order for Pfizer’s Paxlovid from 10 million to 20 million.
The drug, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) late last year, is considered the most effective treatment after infection, but the company reportedly had problems with production.
“If you get COVID-19, the Pfizer pill reduces your chances of being hospitalized by 90 percent,” Biden said.
“I have ordered more pills than anyone in the world. Pfizer is working overtime to provide us with a million pills this month and more than double next month.
As production problems have been somewhat alleviated and the United States will soon have more access to the drug, Biden has announced a “Test for Treatment” program.
Under the new system, every American can get a Covid test at a pharmacy, and if the test is positive, they will be offered free Paxlovid courses.
Only pharmacy clinics will be allowed to distribute the drug, as the White House clarified Wednesday afternoon that a prescription will still be required. Pharmacists are not allowed to prescribe the drug.
The White House, too announced on Wednesday in the morning that it will set up a one-stop shop where Americans can find information about the pandemic, along with investing more resources in vaccine deployments and increasing the nation’s production capacity for Covid tests.
Plans for the future also include increasing domestic production of tests, antivirals and masks, expanding access to resources and public health information, helping Americans manage Covid’s “long-term” symptoms, and launching the Test to Treat program, which should expand access to Covid therapists.
It also provides funding to schools and day care centers to improve their ability to prevent transmission by providing them with Covid tests and resources needed to improve ventilation.
These changes in federal policy for Covid, combined with reduced cases and increased protection against vaccines – nearly 90 percent of adults in the United States have received at least one vaccine – have led experts to hope this spring and summer will be “normal” for most Americans .
That’s what Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said. Squawk Box on CNBC on Thursday that he does not expect the United States to experience another jump of Covid in the coming months, and if anything else, it will happen in the fall or winter of this year.
“We will have a pretty normal spring and summer,” he said, while praising the White House’s efforts to keep schools open by investing in tests and better ventilation.
The number of Americans hospitalized and dying from Covid is also declining, another sign that the country may soon be able to return to normal.
The United States recorded 1,639 Covid deaths each day, a six percent drop in the past week. Covid hospitalizations have dropped 44 percent in the past 14 days.
