RI Residents Should Consider Masks With 3 Viruses Spreading, CDC Says

RHODE ISLAND — As families and friends in Rhode Island gather for the holidays, it might be a good idea to put on a mask to control the spread of COVID-19, RSV and seasonal flu, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week.

With the spread of COVID-19, RSV and seasonal flu, along with lagging vaccination rates, masking is one of the best ways Americans can protect themselves, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Monday in a call with reporters.

Rhode Island hasn't required face coverings in public settings statewide since February, when people were required to mask up at large venues, but could remove their face covering, if vaccinated, at smaller businesses. Some business and health settings like hospitals and doctor's offices have kept mask requirements in place, however.

Mask guidance is based on COVID-19 community levels, and the CDC is considering expanding the dashboard to include seasonal flu and other highly contagious respiratory illnesses to give Americans a clearer picture of when they need to mask up.

“One need not wait on CDC action in order to put a mask on,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Monday in a call with reporters. “We would encourage all of those preventive measures — handwashing, staying home when you’re sick, masking, increased ventilation — during respiratory virus season, but especially in areas of high COVID-19 community levels.”

Nationally, COVID-19 rates and hospitalizations ticked up slightly over the last couple of weeks, although the number of people who are dying is down sharply, to 1,780 for the week ended Nov. 30 from the pandemic high of 23,372 deaths for the week ending Jan. 13, 2021.

Over the last week, Rhode Island has seen 156.3 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents, 99 hospitalizations and 11 deaths, the state Department of Health said Friday.

Nationally, only about 12.7 percent of the eligible 5 and older population are vaccinated and fully boosted against COVID-19. In Rhode Island, about 84 percent of residents have received the first two primary COVID-19 vaccine doses. But booster rates are lower in Rhode Island, though still better than the national average.

On the flu side, all but a handful of states reported “high” or “very high” levels for the week ending Nov. 26, according to CDC data. Rhode Island was rated at "high."

About 56 percent of Americans had gotten their flu shots as of Nov. 19, according to the CDC. In Rhode Island, about 49 percent of residents are inoculated.

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, peaked early, subsided and is picking up again, straining capacity in pediatric units across the country. In the Northeast, the number of positive RSV tests was hovering around 10 percent — down from a recent peak of about 26 percent in late October.

Most children get an RSV infection by the time they’re 2, but people can be infected at any age and more than once in a lifetime, according to the CDC.

The symptoms are typically similar to the common cold. But for the extremely young whose lungs aren’t fully developed, the very old and people whose immune systems are compromised, RSV can lead to breathing difficulties.

Masking is still recommended for people using public transportation, or who have weakened immune systems or for other reasons are at heightened risk for severe respiratory illnesses.

Months of hunkering down and avoiding contact with others during the COVID-19 pandemic weakened Americans’ immune systems, according to health experts.

“Public health officials have been bracing for this possibility since early in the pandemic,” Dr. Michael Mina, chief science officer at eMed and one of the nation’s leading epidemiologists, said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.

“The recent surges are fully expected ramifications of a new virus that caused massive swings in human behavior,” Mina said. “We know that immunity is working exactly as it was supposed to, and in this case, it means that we drained population-level immunity by not having exposures.”