CDC director urges officials against dropping school mask mandates

The director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rochelle Walensky, is urging officials against dropping their school mask mandates even as officials from a handful of states have already announced such intentions for schools and elsewhere.

Walensky acknowledged in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday that “people are interested in taking masks off,” but added that “Right now our CDC guidance has not changed … We continue to endorse universal masking in schools.”

She told the news outlet that COVID-19 cases have continued to burden hospitals and said that the country is still seeing tens of thousands of cases each day. 

“We have and continue to recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission – that is essentially everywhere in the country in public indoor settings,” Walensky told Reuters.

She told the news outlet that once hospitals are not overburdened to be able to immediately take those who have other emergency health needs – like injuries from a motor vehicle crash or a heart attack – is when the pandemic will shift into an endemic. 

Walensky’s remarks come as plans to get rid of mask mandates in indoor spaces, including K-12 schools have been announced by officials in California, New Jersey, Oregon, Delaware and Connecticut, Reuters noted.

But other health officials are warning against lifting COVID-19 protocol, expressing concerns that those decisions could be premature.

“We’re concerned that a narrative has taken hold in some countries that because of vaccines, and because of omicron’s high transmissibility and lower severity, preventing transmission is no longer possible and no longer necessary,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a media briefing last week. 

“Nothing could be further from the truth. More transmission means more disease,” he continued.