The Sunday Mail
Roni Caryn Rabin
AS officials in Texas and Mississippi lifted state-wide mask mandates, researchers at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention offered fresh evidence of the importance of mask use in a new study on Friday.
Wearing masks, the study reported, was linked to fewer infections with the coronavirus and Covid-19 deaths in counties across the United States.
The researchers also found that counties opening restaurants for on-premises dining — indoors or outdoors — saw a rise in daily infections about six weeks later, and an increase in Covid-19 death rates about two months later.
The study does not prove cause and effect, but the findings square with other research showing that masks prevent infection and that indoor spaces foster the spread of the virus through aerosols, tiny respiratory particles that linger in the air.
“You have decreases in cases and deaths when you wear masks, and you have increases in cases and deaths when you have in-person restaurant dining,” Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, said on Friday.
“And so we would advocate for policies, certainly while we are at this plateau of a high number of cases, that would listen to that public health science.”
The findings come as city and state officials nationwide grapple with growing pressure to reopen schools and businesses amid falling rates of new cases and deaths.
Officials recently began allowing limited indoor dining at New York City restaurants.
And on Thursday, Connecticut’s governor said the state would end capacity limits on restaurants, gyms and offices later this month.
Masks will still be required in both places.
Coronavirus cases and deaths are down significantly across the country compared to the devastating peaks around the holidays.
But as more cases of worrisome virus variants have been detected and the US vaccination campaign continues, president Joe Biden and his team have stressed in recent days that now is not the time for Americans to relax, particularly on wearing masks.
The seven-day average of new cases was about 61 000 per day as of Friday, the lowest average since October, according to a New York Times database.
But that number was still close to last summer’s highest peak.
Fatalities are falling, too, in part because of vaccinations at nursing homes.
Yet the nation is still routinely reporting 2 000 deaths in a single day.
Mr Biden on Wednesday criticised the decisions by the governors of Texas and Mississippi to lift state-wide mask mandates and reopen businesses without restrictions, calling the plans “a big mistake” that reflected “Neanderthal thinking”.
The president, who has asked the American people to wear a mask for his first 100 days in office, said it was critical for public officials to follow the guidance of doctors and public health leaders as the vaccination campaign gains momentum.
According to the CDC, about 54 million people had already received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine as of Thursday.
Mr Biden’s power to enforce mask-wearing is limited to the federal sphere; he has ordered a mask requirement for anyone on federal property, and his administration is asking people to wear masks regardless of local mandates.
“It may seem tempting, in the face of all of this progress, to try to rush back to normalcy as if the virus is in the rear view mirror. It’s not,” Andy Slavitt, a White House pandemic adviser, said on Friday.
“Why somebody wouldn’t take advantage of a small intervention to save people’s lives, that would be surprising.”
In the latest study, CDC researchers examined the association between mask mandates and indoor or outdoor restaurant dining and the number of coronavirus infections and deaths last year between March 1 and December 31.
The agency relied on county-level data from state government websites and measured daily percentage growth in coronavirus cases and deaths. Infections and deaths declined after counties required mask use, the agency found.
Daily infections rose about six weeks after counties allowed restaurants to open for dining on the premises, and death rates followed two months later.
Mask mandates were linked to statistically significant decreases in coronavirus cases and death rates within 20 days of implementation, the report’s authors concluded.
On-premises dining, whether indoors or outdoors, at restaurants was associated with increases in case and death rates within 41 to 80 days after reopenings.
“State mask mandates and prohibiting on-premises dining at restaurants help limit potential exposure to SARS-Cov-2, reducing community transmission of Covid-19,” the authors wrote.
Shortly after publishing the report, the CDC amended it to urge restaurants that resume on-premises dining to follow the CDC’s guidelines for reducing transmission in restaurant settings.
That includes “everything from having staff stay home when they show signs of Covid-19 or have tested positive or been in contact with someone who has Covid-19, and requiring masks among employees as well as customers who are not actively eating or drinking,” said Gery Guy, a health scientist with the CDC’s Covid-19 response team and the study’s corresponding author.
Other steps that can be taken are ensuring adequate ventilation, providing options to eat outdoors, spacing customers six feet apart, encouraging hand washing and frequent sanitising of surfaces that are touched a lot, such as cash registers, pay terminals, door handles and tables.
“The message is, if restaurants are going to open for on-premise dining, it’s important to follow CDC guidelines to do so safely and effectively,” Dr Guy said. — The New York Times.
