NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – New York City, Long Island and other parts of the Tri-State have “substantial” or “high” COVID-19 transmission—meaning they're areas where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends that the fully vaccinated mask up indoors.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday that the agency was advising fully vaccinated people to return to wearing masks indoors in areas with “substantial” or “high” levels of transmission, which includes about 60% of U.S. counties.
According to a CDC map of community transmission, all of New York City qualifies for the new guidance. The four counties covering Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx have “substantial” transmission, while the county that covers Staten Island has “high” transmission.
Nassau and Suffolk counties both have “substantial” transmission, as do a number of counties in northern New Jersey, including Bergen, Essex, Middlesex and Union counties. Monmouth County has a “high” transmission.
Currently, all of Connecticut has “moderate” transmission, as do Westchester, Rockland, Orange and Putnam counties in New York.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday that the state will do a “full review of the CDC guidance” with federal officials and international health experts.
Cuomo said the new guidance should be “carefully reviewed” as he urged local governments in areas of the state with high transmission to “seriously consider the CDC guidance.”
In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy said Wednesday that the state will “strongly recommend” that residents wear masks in high-risk indoor settings in light of the new guidance.
Murphy advised both vaccinated and unvaccinated New Jerseyans to wear masks in crowded indoor settings, as well as indoor settings “where the vaccine status of another individual in the setting is unknown.”
Gov. Ned Lamont on Tuesday noted that two Connecticut counties, Hartford and New London, are close to the CDC's threshold for indoor masks. Updates are expected in the coming days on mask-wearing. Earlier in the day, Lamont said he'll “probably” follow the CDC's recommendations for indoor mask-wearing but acknowledged that local infection rates could be considered.
Most new infections in the U.S. continue to be among unvaccinated people. But “breakthrough” infections, which generally cause milder illness, can occur in vaccinated people. When earlier strains of the virus predominated, infected vaccinated people were found to have low levels of virus and were deemed unlikely to spread the virus much, Walensky said Tuesday.
But with the delta variant, the level of virus in infected vaccinated people is "indistinguishable” from the level of virus in the noses and throats of unvaccinated people, Walensky said.
The data emerged over the last couple of days from 100 samples. It is unpublished, and the CDC has not released it. But “it is concerning enough that we feel like we have to act,” Walensky said.
Citing new information about the variant's ability to spread among vaccinated people, the CDC also recommended indoor masks for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools nationwide, regardless of vaccination status.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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