CDC To Loosen Masking? Changes 'Likely,' Gov. Phil Murphy Says

NEW JERSEY — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may soon change its mask guidance. But New Jersey officials have not yet received word on when or how, Gov. Phil Murphy said Wednesday.

The CDC could loosen guidance on indoor masking as early as next week, according to NBC News. The agency and the White House have been mum about what changes they might make, but CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky confirmed to reporters Wednesday that the agency is looking at new metrics to relax pandemic guidelines, including masks.

Updated guidance could come "soon," Walensky said Wednesday in a news briefing.

Murphy had a call Tuesday with White House officials, including Walensky and Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's top medical advisor. But updated mandates weren't on the agenda, Murphy said.

"I think we’re all finding our way forward on that front (a transition from the pandemic)," Murphy said Wednesday at New Jersey's weekly coronavirus news briefing. "So I suspect that we’ll see more on that in terms of what markers to be looking for. The CDC gave no indication yesterday of changing any of their mandates. But there’s a lot of noise that that could happen and probably likely will happen at some point."

Federal mandates require masking for settings such as public transportation, airports, indoor transit hubs, health care facilities and federal buildings. The CDC also recommends universal indoor masking in areas with substantial or high transmission — determined by the number of cases per 100,000 people and positivity rate. Virtually all of the United States has high transmission, according to the CDC.

COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to drop nationally since the peak of the omicron-variant wave. But 3,306 people in the United States died from the virus Wednesday, culminating in an average of 2,292 deaths per day in the past week, according to The New York Times.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans, including 79 percent of New Jerseyans, somewhat or strongly support indoor mask mandates, according to a January poll of 22,961 people from The COVID States Project — a multi-university group of researchers.

But Walensky says the U.S. is reaching a point in which COVID-19 is no longer a "constant crisis" as more cities, businesses and sports venues begin lifting masking restrictions across the country.

The CDC still has a challenging job in terms of updating guidance, both in terms of formulating a plan to work for the entire nation and the characteristics of the omicron wave, Murphy says.

"Omicron goes up like it’s going to the moon, and then it falls just as fast," Murphy said. "So the dispersion of experience across states that got hit early like ours versus the average American experience in this particular wave can be quite meaningfully different, so that’s something. They’ve got a complexity that we just don’t have."