CDC Updates COVID Mask Guidelines: What It Means In Arizona

ARIZONA —The Biden administration dramatically loosened its COVID-19 mask guidance Friday as infection rates return to pre-omicron variant levels around the country.

The bottom line: About 70 percent of Americans will be able to shed their masks while indoors.

In the Phoenix metro area and Tucson, local governments and schools had already relaxed masking requirements even before the CDC announcement. While masking was still required inside of city of Phoenix buildings as of Friday morning, businesses within the city were free to require patrons to mask, or not. The Pima County Board of Supervisors, which reinstated a county-wide mask mandate in December for indoor areas where social distancing wasn't possible, voted to allow the mandate to expire as of Feb. 28.

The city of Tempe announced this week that face masks would be optional inside city-run buildings, beginning Saturday.

Scottsdale Unified School District stopped requiring masks for students and teachers in January, although the district still strongly recommends that students and staff mask while indoors.

The new framework categorizes counties by “low,” “medium” or “high” risk. The CDC isn’t recommending mask-wearing in the first two categories, except among people who have underlying health conditions that put them at high risk for COVID-19.

In schools, masking is only recommended in counties with a high risk of infection.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously recommended that people wear masks in areas with substantial or high transmission — roughly about 95 percent of U.S. counties, according to the latest data. The new guidance comes as the virus becomes endemic and the Biden administration focuses on preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19 rather than all instances of infection.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky tweeted Thursday that the agency is shifting its focus to concentrate on preventing the spread of COVID-19 to minimize the strain on the health care system.

In a White House briefing last week, she said hospital capacity is an “important barometer.”

“Our hospitals need to be able to take care of people with heart attacks and strokes,” she said. “Our emergency departments can’t be so overwhelmed that patients with emergent issues have to wait in line.”

In her Thursday night tweets, Walensky said community infection rates will determine when and where extra precautions such as mask wearing and testing should be targeted.

“Moving forward, our approach will advise enhanced prevention efforts in communities with a high volume of severe illness and will also focus on protecting our healthcare systems from being overwhelmed,” she tweeted.

The omicron variant of the coronavirus is highly contagious, but generally causes less severe COVID-19 illnesses than other variants, especially among people who are fully vaccinated and boosted, data shows.

Daily U.S. COVID-19 infection rates are down to about 82,000 cases nationwide, according to a database kept by The New York Times, and hospitalizations are down about 44 percent. However, about 2,000 people a day still are dying of the virus, The Times reported.

Omicron infection rates in Maricopa and Pima counties are still considered "high," according to their health departments. Maricopa County had an infection rate of 154 per 100,000 people as of Friday and a test positivity rate of 10 percent. So far there have been 15,759 deaths in Maricopa County attributed to COVID-19, according to the Maricopa County Department of Health.

The Pima County Health Department also reported that its COVID-19 case rate is still above 100 cases per 100,000 people for the past two weeks. So far, 3,644 people in Pima County have died of the disease.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.