Mask List Growing Amid Summer COVID Wave In NJ: CDC

NEW JERSEY — The CDC recommended that people in 18 New Jersey counties mask up for public, indoor spaces. The state's summer COVID-19 wave — driven by omicron strain BA.5 — has brought upticks in transmission and hospitalizations but, so far, no upswing in death rates from the virus.

The CDC 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. The agency updates its color-coded COVID-19 maps each Thursday.

After New Jersey had only six counties in the high category two weeks ago, the CDC gave 17 counties the mask recommendation last week. As of Thursday, Salem County shows high community levels, leaving Mercer, Gloucester and Cumberland Counties as the only places in New Jersey with "medium" community levels.

The CDC's mask recommendations do not trigger any mandates in New Jersey. People may also choose to continue masking in any setting.

BA.5's Emergence

The CDC estimates that BA.5 has been the New Jersey region's dominant strain since late June. (The CDC separates its most up-to-date variant-proportion data into regions. New Jersey's region also includes New York, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.)

BA.5 made up an estimated 80 percent of cases in the region for the week ending Saturday, four weeks after representing 31.2 percent of infections, according to the CDC. BA.5 is the most transmittable COVID variant to date, with greater ability than prior strains to evade prior immunity from COVID infection and vaccination.

But so far, there's no evidence that BA.5 causes more severe disease than the other omicron variants. And health experts believe the current vaccines still work well to prevent severe illness and death. Read more: COVID's Most Contagious Strain Yet In NJ: What To Know About BA.5

State Of COVID In NJ

The state hit 1,000 hospital patients with confirmed or suspected COVID on July 12 for the first time since February, according to the New Jersey Department of Health. New Jersey's COVID hospitalization increased by more than 300 from June 22 (696) to July 14 (1,041).

But the hospitalization totals remained level this week, with 1,046 COVID patients as of Thursday.

Forty-eight people in New Jersey died from COVID in the past week, according to the CDC. COVID death tolls are a lagging indicator — meaning that, during a COVID wave, they tend to rise only after spikes in cases and hospitalizations. But death tolls in the state have yet to increase during the BA.5 wave, according to the CDC.

New Jersey's COVID transmission rate remains higher than the pivotal 1.0 threshold — 1.08 as of Friday, according to the state health department. A transmission rate higher than 1 indicates that each existing infection causes a new infection — a sign that the virus is spreading more quickly.

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 reported cases in New Jersey have gradually risen in the past month.

New Jersey averaged 3,644 infections per day in the last week, according to federal data. Here's how that seven-day average compares to past points:

• July 21, 2021: seven-day case average of 512, one of New Jersey's lowest marks during the pandemic. One year later, New Jersey is logging seven times more cases, and that doesn't account for positive results from at-home tests.
• Jan. 10: 31,669 new cases per day — New Jersey's highest case average during the pandemic.
• March 17: 738 infections per day — the state's lowest seven-day average mark this calendar year.
• May 21: 4,848 new cases per day — New Jersey's highest-recorded mark of the springtime COVID wave.
• June 18: 2,668 daily infections — New Jersey's lowest seven-day average since the springtime COVID wave diminished.
• July 14: 3,636 new cases per day — relatively similar to the current seven-day average.

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.