The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will announce plans to significantly loosen federal mask-wearing guidelines later Friday, the Associated Press reported, citing two people familiar with the plan. will announce a change to the metrics it uses to determine whether to recommend face coverings, shifting from looking at COVID-19 case counts to a more holistic view of risk from the coronavirus to a community. Under current guidelines, masks are recommended for people residing in communities of substantial or high transmission – roughly 95% of U.S. counties, according to the latest data. The new metrics will still consider caseloads, but also take into account hospitalizations and local hospital capacity, which have been markedly improved during the emergence of the omicron variant. The news comes as the U.S. is averaging about 72,754 cases of COVID a day, down 65% from two weeks ago,according to a New York Times tracker, as the surge of cases caused by omicron continues to decline from its January peak. The U.S. is averaging 57,544 hospitalizations a day, down 44% from two weeks ago. And deaths are finally starting to fall, down 27% to an average of 1,868 a day. Globally, the case tally now stands at 431.6 million while the death toll is above 5.92 million. The U.S. continues to lead the world with 78.8 million cases and 944,831 fatalities.
Source: Marketwatch