The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended universal mask use in all indoor settings, except when people are in their own homes, as part of a multipronged strategy to slow the nation’s surge and speed economic recovery.
The CDC published its advice, which laid out evidence-based strategies that also included physical distancing and stepping up testing, diagnosis, and isolation, in an early online report in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
It said with the onset of colder weather, more time spent indoors, and the ongoing holiday season, the United States has entered a high-level transmission phase that requires individuals and communities to take all steps, especially given that the virus can spread silently, with 50% of transmission from asymptomatic people.
The CDC said the nation’s rapidly expanding activity is stressing health capacity and that full implementation of all the measures would help save lives, keep kids in school, and help keep essential businesses functioning.
“These actions will provide a bridge to a future with wide availability and high community coverage of effective vaccines, when safe return to more everyday activities in a range of settings will be possible,” it added.
In other surge-related developments, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, said during a Zoom call with the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention that most churches should transition to remote services if they haven’t already done so, NPR reported. The comments came the same day the US Supreme Court ordered a federal court to reexamine its earlier support for restrictions on indoor religious services in California.
