Back To Masking In NJ? CDC May Recommend It Soon

NEW JERSEY — Federal health officials recommend wearing a mask inside indoor, public spaces in most of the Northeast. Based on recent COVID-19 trends, New Jersey could be next.

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention overhauled its standards for assessing local COVID activity in late February. According to the new framework, people should mask up indoors when their community reaches "high" COVID levels.

As of Friday, all New Jersey counties remain at "low" and "medium" community levels. But COVID transmission and hospitalizations continue to increase throughout the Garden State, meaning counties could soon reach the CDC's thresholds to trigger mask recommendations.

Meanwhile, much of the Northeast falls under the high category. The CDC recommends masking in much of the region, including most of New York, Massachusetts and Vermont.

Two weeks ago New Jersey, the CDC placed only Morris and Bergen Counties in the yellow, medium category, while putting the rest of the state into the low category for COVID activity. But as of Friday morning, New Jersey has 14 counties with moderate COVID levels, while seven still have low community levels, according to the CDC.

Passaic, Warren, Camden, Gloucester, Atlantic, Salem and Cumberland Counties still have low COVID levels, according to the CDC.

What High Community Levels Mean

Reaching the high category doesn't trigger mask mandates. New Jersey has essentially lifted its mask requirements, but individual entities such as school districts and businesses can still impose their own. People may also keep masking at any time.

Since late February, the CDC has assessed community COVID levels through rates of new cases and hospitalizations.

Take Bergen County — the New Jersey county with the highest case rate in the past week at 333.83 per 100,000 people. The CDC places counties with case rates of 200 or more in at least the medium category.

In the past week, 6.1 people per 100,000 in Bergen County have been hospitalized with COVID, while patients with confirmed COVID infections occupied 2.2 percent of the county's hospital beds. Bergen County would need to exceed 10 COVID hospital admissions per 100,000 people or 10 percent COVID-patient occupancy in hospital beds to move to the high category.

But another CDC map, which uses the agency's prior framework for assessing COVID risk, tells a different story. All of New Jersey and much of the nation has high COVID transmission levels, according to the CDC maps that represent the agency's former guidelines:

Critics of the CDC's new approach say the agency moved the goalposts to justify political missions to get people back to normal sooner than is safe. National Nurses United — the nation's largest union of registered nurses — claimed the CDC changed its guidelines to respond to "political pressures."

"The new color-coded scheme will create confusion and public distrust in what is safe and what is not," said NNU President Zenei Triunfo-Cortez. "The danger to our most vulnerable populations, including immunocompromised individuals and young children, is especially worrisome."

COVID In New Jersey

COVID cases and hospitalizations continue to trend upwards in the Garden State. The New Jersey Department of Health reported at least 3,000 new cases Thursday for the first time since Feb. 3 — toward the end of the omicron wave. State officials reported 3,479 new cases Thursday and 3,387 infections Friday.

Reported case totals provided by health officials don't include results from at-home test kits, which aren't reported to authorities. While the rise in at-home testing has made it easier for many to see if they're positive for the virus, public health experts believe it's contributed to an undercount of cases.

The state had a transmission rate of 1.2 on Thursday. A transmission rate higher than one means that every new case leads to another new case, signifying a quickening spread of the virus.

New Jersey had 590 COVID patients in hospitals Thursday, compared to 339 at the end of March. While COVID hospitalizations have increased in New Jersey, they haven't approached the levels of the state's worst coronavirus outbreaks. The state reported 6,089 COVID patients in hospital beds on Jan. 11 — the first time the state exceeded 6,000 since April 2020.