The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may soon want to change its mask recommendation due to the changing nature of the coronavirus outbreak, said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
What happened: Gottlieb said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that he could see the CDC making new COVID-19 recommendations based on local communities.
- “That’s probably where they should have been all along. I think they’re going to make that adaptation because there clearly are parts of the country where prevalence is low enough now and heading in a positive direction that they can start lifting this mitigation,” he said.
Yes, but: “There’s still parts of the country that have a lot of overcrowded infection,” Gottlieb said, according to the New York Post.
- “When you look at states like Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, they’re at about … 100 cases per 100,000 people per day. That’s a pretty dense epidemic.”
- “So the CDC has a hard time setting a national standard across a very diverse experience with this.”
The bigger picture: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned against dropping COVID-19 mask mandates and COVID-19 restrictions, though.
- “Now is not the moment,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, in an interview with Reuters.
- “I know people are interested in taking masks off. I too am interested. That would be one marker that we have much of the pandemic behind us,” Walenksy told Reuters. “Right now our CDC guidance has not changed. … We continue to endorse universal masking in schools.”