NY Residents Should Consider Masking Up During The Holidays: CDC

NEW YORK — As families and friends in New York gather for the holidays, they may want to put on a mask to control the spread of COVID-19, RSV and seasonal flu, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week.

With the spread of COVID-19, RSV and seasonal flu, along with lagging vaccination rates, masking up is one of the best ways Americans can protect themselves, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said Monday in a call with reporters.

New York has relaxed its mask guidance and doesn’t require face coverings in public settings. However, many states still require masking for people in high-risk settings, like hospitals, doctor’s offices and nursing homes.

Gov. Kathy Hochul lifted the New York’s general mask order Feb. 10, and mandates covering public transit, homeless shelters and correctional facilities ended Sept. 7. Face-covering remains mandatory in health care facilities, including nursing homes. Many doctor’s offices are still requiring patients to put masks on before coming inside for appointments.

Mask guidance is based on COVID-19 community levels, and the CDC is considering expanding the dashboard to include seasonal flu and other highly contagious respiratory illnesses to give Americans a clearer picture of when they need to mask up.

“One need not wait on CDC action in order to put a mask on,” Walensky said. “We would encourage all of those preventive measures — handwashing, staying home when you’re sick, masking, increased ventilation — during respiratory virus season, but especially in areas of high COVID-19 community levels.”

Nationally, COVID-19 rates and hospitalizations ticked up slightly over the last couple of weeks, although the number of people who are dying is down sharply, to 1,780 for the week ending Nov. 30 from the pandemic high of 23,372 deaths for the week ending Jan. 13, 2021.

Hochul on Wednesday updated New Yorkers on the state's progress combating COVID-19. She also urged people to take proven prevention measures to protect against respiratory syncytial virus, flu and COVID-19 and reduce the burden on local hospitals.

She said New Yorkers can't get complacent in the fight against the triple threat of COVID, RSV and influenza.

"We have to take advantage of the resources at our disposal so that we come out of this winter season healthy and happy," Hochul said.

"We should all celebrate the holidays while taking preventative measures, getting tested and vaccinated and talking to a doctor if you feel ill,” she said. “Let's make sure we keep our guard up against these illnesses and that we continue to protect each other, especially our most vulnerable."

Nationally, only about 12.7 percent of the eligible 5 and older population are vaccinated and fully boosted against COVID-19. In New York, 13.4 percent of those 5 and up have taken an updated booster shot.

All but a handful of states reported “high” or “very high” levels of flu for the week ending Nov. 26, according to CDC data.

In New York, the state Department of Health issued a new report this week showing a 76 percent week-over-week jump in lab-confirmed flu cases across New York and week-over-week hospitalizations up 67 percent. Cases of influenza have now been detected in all 62 counties across the state, which has medical experts highlighting the need for New Yorkers to take steps and precautions that will reduce the risk of severe illness for children and adults.

About 56 percent of Americans had gotten their flu shots as of Nov. 19, according to the CDC. In New York, as of Oct. 29, only 24.8 percent of adults 18 and older have received their flu shot this season.

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, peaked early, subsided and is picking up again, straining capacity in pediatric units across the country. In New York, as of Dec. 3, the percentage of positive RSV tests is just under 10 percent out of 5,222 positive tests.

Most children get an RSV infection by the time they’re 2, but people can be infected at any age and more than once in a lifetime, according to the CDC.

The symptoms are typically similar to the common cold. But for the extremely young whose lungs aren’t fully developed, the very old and people whose immune systems are compromised, RSV can lead to breathing difficulties.

Masking is still recommended for people using public transportation, or who have weakened immune systems or for other reasons are at heightened risk for severe respiratory illnesses.

Months of hunkering down and avoiding contact with others during the COVID-19 pandemic weakened Americans’ immune systems, according to health experts.

“Public health officials have been bracing for this possibility since early in the pandemic,” Dr. Michael Mina, chief science officer at eMed and one of the nation’s leading epidemiologists, said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.

“The recent surges are fully expected ramifications of a new virus that caused massive swings in human behavior,” Mina said. “We know that immunity is working exactly as it was supposed to, and in this case, it means that we drained population-level immunity by not having exposures.”