Back To School Masking? Here Is The Latest CDC Recommendation For NJ

NEW JERSEY — With recent declines in COVID-19 transmission and hospitalizations, federal health officials dialed back mask guidance Thursday in New Jersey. But the CDC said that people in seven New Jersey should still wear face coverings for indoor, public spaces.

The agency's guidance doesn't trigger any mask mandates for the state. But it can help families make more informed choices with school around the corner. On one hand, the CDC recently loosened school COVID protocols, and New Jersey followed suit. But federal health officials also recommend the following in areas with "high" community COVID levels:

• Wear a high-quality mask or respirator.
• If you are at high risk of getting very sick, consider avoiding non-essential indoor activities in public where you could be exposed.

The CDC adopted the community-level metric — a metric based on hospitalizations and case rates — in late February, updating its color-coded COVID maps each Thursday. This week's map contained seven New Jersey counties with high levels: Essex, Middlesex, Monmouth, Burlington, Camden, Atlantic and Cape May Counties.

The agency took 10 New Jersey counties out of the high category this week. Here are the changes from the map issued Aug. 11:

• The following areas went from high to medium community levels: Bergen, Passaic, Morris, Union, Somerset, Mercer, Ocean, Gloucester and Salem Counties.
• The CDC downgraded Hudson County from the high to the low category.

NJ By The Numbers

The state had 1,033 hospital patients with confirmed or suspected COVID as of Wednesday — the New Jersey Department of Health's last day with complete hospitalization data as of Friday morning. That's a decline from a week prior, when state officials tallied 1,124 COVID patients in hospitals.

About 3,300 people in the U.S. died of COVID in the past week, according to federal data. The death toll includes 50 people in New Jersey.

Health officials logged a transmission rate of 0.89 for New Jersey as of Friday morning — a hair down from the rate of 0.91 at that 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 2,654 cases per day in the past week — down from the prior week's average of 3,079 daily infections, 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.