CDC Eases COVID Restrictions: What Remains In NJ

NEW JERSEY — Federal health authorities announced scaled-back COVID-19 guidelines Thursday, representing a big change for New Jersey residents as key recommendations from the beginning of the pandemic are going away.

The CDC is no longer recommending people quarantine when exposed to someone with COVID and is also dropping its guidance for people to stay 6 feet apart. Instead, the agency recommends that those exposed to someone with COVID wear a mask for 10 days and test for the virus on the fifth day.

The guidelines for those who test positive remain unchanged. They should isolate for five days and may end isolation after that time if they are fever-free for 24 hours without medication and their symptoms are improving. A mask should still be worn through the 10th day after testing positive, according to the federal agency.

Greta Massetti, a senior epidemiologist with the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and an author of the guidelines, noted the country is better equipped to protect people and communities from severe COVID illness.

"This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives," Massetti said.

About 2,800 Americans died of COVID in the past week, according to the CDC. But an estimated 95 percent of Americans have some level of immunity from COVID, either from vaccination or infection, Massetti told reporters.

The CDC guidelines align with the idea that children should be in the classroom, an objective that “can be done safely with acceptable levels of risk,” Dr. Richard Besser, a pediatrician and president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, told NBC News.

The federal agency will announce updated guidelines for health care settings and high-risk congregate settings "in the coming weeks," officials said.

Masks Still Recommended In Much Of NJ

Most of New Jersey should still wear a mask for indoor, public spaces, according to the CDC. The agency recommends masking in counties with "high" COVID-19 community levels — a metric based on hospitalizations and case rates that the agency adopted in late February, updating its color-coded COVID maps each Thursday.

This week's map contained 17 counties in the red — all except Sussex, Warren, Hunterdon and Cumberland Counties, which have medium community levels.

Here's how the map changed from the prior week's:

• Mercer, Gloucester and Salem Counties went from the medium to the high category.
• Warren County shifted from low to medium community levels.

The updated protocols don't change the CDC's masking recommendations. The agency's mask guidance doesn't trigger any mandates in New Jersey, and people may still choose to wear a face covering in any setting.

NJ By The Numbers

The state had 1,061 hospital patients with confirmed or suspected COVID as of Thursday, according to the New Jersey Department of Health. The figure marks a decline from Tuesday's total of 1,164 — the state's highest COVID-hospitalization tally since Feb. 16, when last winter's omicron wave waned.

Sixty-eight people in New Jersey died from COVID in the past week, according to the CDC.

The state health department logged a transmission rate of 0.91 for New Jersey as of Friday morning — down from 0.98 at this time last week. A transmission rate lower than 1 indicates that each existing infection causes less than one new infection — a sign that the virus's spread is slowing down.

True case totals became more difficult to calculate in recent months because of the prevalence of at-home tests that don't typically get recorded in COVID statistics. But New Jersey averaged 3,079 infections per day in the past week — down from the prior week's average of 3,391 new cases per day, according to federal data.

For more coronavirus numbers, visit the state health department's COVID-19 dashboard, The New York Times data page for New Jersey and the CDC's data tracker.