NJ Mask Guidance Changes: Where Are Face Coverings Still Recommended?

NEW JERSEY — Federal health officials shifted New Jersey's mask guidance once again. As of Thursday, the CDC recommends that people in three wear face coverings for indoor, public spaces in New Jersey counties with high COVID-19 levels.

The CDC adopted the community-level metric — a metric based on hospitalizations and case rates — in late February. The agency updates its color-coded COVID maps each Thursday, recommending masks in counties with "high" community levels. One week after New Jersey had seven counties in the high category, only three remained there on Thursday's map.

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

• Mercer County went from the medium to the high category.
• The CDC downgraded five counties that showed high community levels last week. Monmouth, Burlington and Camden Counties had medium levels this week, while Essex and Middlesex Counties entered the low category.
• Bergen, Passaic, Union, Somerset, Hunterdon and Warren Counties went from medium to low 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.

NJ By The Numbers

The state had 1,038 hospital patients with confirmed or suspected COVID as of Thursday, according to the New Jersey Department of Health. Officials were missing data from two of the state's 71 hospitals as of Friday morning, so the true hospitalization total is unclear. New Jersey's daily number of COVID hospital patients totaled 1,033 on Aug. 17 and fluctuated between 968 and 990 from Aug. 19 to Wednesday.

Seventy-two people died from COVID in the past week, according to the CDC. The COVID death toll around the nation totaled about 3,200 during that span, according to federal estimates.

But New Jersey's transmission rate improved to 0.87 as of Friday morning — a hair down from the rate of 0.89 at that time last week, according to the state health department. 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's case totals continue to decline. The state averaged 2,306 new cases per day in the past week — down from the average of 2,661 daily infections from the prior week and the summer's high mark of 3,767 daily cases for the week ending July 23, 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.

What Else You Should Know

Here's more COVID news that could impact you.

• President Joe Biden's administration will stop covering costs for COVID vaccines, treatments and tests as early as this fall. The action will likely bring out-of-pocket costs to people without health insurance. But Medicaid and most private health insurance plans will need to continue covering certain costs for a period of time.
• The Food and Drug Administration plans to authorize updated versions of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID boosters around Labor Day, sources told NBC News. The new shots target the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants — the latter of which accounts of nearly 90 percent of all new COVID cases in the U.S., according to the CDC.
• Around 16 million working-age Americans (ages 18-65) have long COVID, including 2 to 4 million who are out of work because of long COVID, according to research from the Brookings Institution.