CDC loosens mask guidance, Pa. health chief says state moving into 'next phase' of living with covid

As the federal government loosens masking guidance for a majority of healthy Americans, Pennsylvania officials said they will follow suit while keeping an eye on covid-related hospital admissions and case counts should they begin to rise again.

“Pennsylvania is moving in the right direction,” said Acting Secretary of Health Keara Klinepeter. “Case counts are at their lowest since last August and continue to fall, hospital admissions due to covid-19 are falling and, thank goodness, mortality rates are declining.”

Klinepeter’s briefing came the same day that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced significant changes to the way in which it determines whether residents in a particular county should mask up indoors.

The CDC has long relied on case counts and positivity rates to determine transmission rates in counties across the country.

The new guidance will rely on three metrics: new covid-related hospital admissions over the previous week; the percentage of hospital beds occupied by covid patients; and new covid cases per 100,000 people over the previous week, according to The Associated Press.

Counties will now be deemed either low risk, medium risk or high risk depending upon those metrics. It will be recommended that healthy people in counties considered low or medium risk — including school children — can go mask-free. Those in high-risk counties should continue wearing masks indoors.

The new guidance means about 63% of U.S. counties — where about 70% of the U.S. population lives — will be in areas deemed low or medium risk, the AP reported. About 28% of the population remains in counties that are considered high risk.

Much of Western Pennsylvania is considered low or medium risk. Allegheny and Westmoreland counties are both considered low risk, along with Washington, Beaver, Butler and Armstrong.

Cambria, Crawford, Jefferson counties have been deemed to remain high-risk area by the CDC metrics.

Klinepeter would not say whether she believes Pennsylvania has reached an endemic stage when it comes to covid, noting that the World Health Organization has continued to use “pandemic” to describe the covid-19 situation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines endemic as “the constant presence of an agent or health condition within a given geographic area or population,” as opposed to a pandemic, which “affects the global population.”

Average daily case counts in Pennsylvania have fallen to roughly 2,500, a fraction of the record 30,000 cases recorded in one day last month.

“Despite this progress, covid-19 is not going away,” Klinepeter said. “But Pennsylvania is well-positioned with the tools, knowledge and resources we have to prioritize prevention in everyday life and manage future outbreaks when they occur.”

She said the state will continue to monitor trends and outbreaks and make recommendations as needed.

It is a move toward living alongside the virus, which has shown that it will not become a thing of the past, but rather is here to stay.

“I think it’s important that folks really assess risk for themselves,” Klinepeter said.

“I think it’s also about continuing to keep those protections in place if you are at risk,” she added. “So for people who are immunocompromised, maybe they will choose to continue wearing a mask when they go to the grocery store.”

Referencing the continued divide over mask-wearing, she urged kindness.

“You don’t always know why someone’s wearing a mask,” she said. “I think it’s important that as we enter this next phase, we continue to grant grace to other people who are making the best decisions they can and … trying to adjust to what this next period of time looks like.”