Please Note: This transcript is not edited and may contain errors.
Operator:
Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are on listen only mode during the Q&A session.
If you’d like to ask a question, you may press star one on your phone.
Today’s call is being recorded.
If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Now I’d like, turn the call over to Mr. Benjamin Hayes. Sir, may begin.
Benjamin Haynes:
Thank you, Ted. And thank you all for joining us for today’s COVID 19 update. We’re joined by CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Dr. Greta Massetti from the COVID 19 Incident Management Team, both will provide opening remarks before taking your questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Dr. Walensky.
Dr. Walensky:
Thank you, Benjamin and thank you all for joining us today. Today, CDC is updating its framework to monitor the level of COVID 19 and communities. We’re in a stronger place today as a nation with more tools to protect ourselves in our communities from COVID 19, like vaccination, boosters, broader access to testing, availability of high quality masks, accessibility to new treatments, and improved ventilation. Over 200 million people have received a primary vaccine series and nearly 100 million have been boosted and millions more have had prior disease. With widespread population immunity, the overall risk of severe disease is now generally lower. Now, as the virus continues to circulate in our communities, we must focus our metrics beyond just cases in the community and direct our efforts toward protecting people at high risk for severe illness and preventing COVID 19 from overwhelming our hospitals and our healthcare systems.
This new framework moves beyond just looking at cases and test positivity to evaluate factors that reflect the severity of disease, including hospitalizations and hospital capacity, and helps to determine whether the level of COVID 19 and severe disease are low, medium, or high in a community.
Dr. Walensky:
The COVID 19 community level we are releasing today will inform CDC recommendations on prevention measures like masking and CDCs recommendations for layer prevention measures, and will depend on the COVID 19 level in the community. This updated approach focuses on directing our prevention efforts towards protecting people at high risk for severe illness and preventing hospitals and healthcare systems from being overwhelmed.
To find your community level, we are updating the CDC’s website to reflect this framework.
So people will be able to go to www.cdc.gov or call 1-800-CDC-INFO to find your community level and what prevention strategies are recommended, including where or when to mask. Please remember that there are people who remain at higher risk for COVID 19 and who may need additional protection. Those who are immunocompromised or have underlying health conditions, those who have disabilities, or those who live with people who are at risk. Those people might choose to take extra precautions regardless of what level their community is in. So with that, I’m going to turn things over now to Dr. Greta Massetti, who will walk us through this framework and the science behind it. Thank you.
Dr. Massetti:
Thank you, Dr. Walensky. The updated metrics in this framework provide a current picture of COVID 19 disease in a community.
They also include strong predictors of the potential for strain on the healthcare system.
A community’s COVID 19 level is determined by a combination of three pieces of information: new hospitalizations for COVID 19, current hospital beds occupied by COVID 19 patients or hospital capacity, and new COVID 19 cases. These metrics will tell us if the level is low, medium, or high. Let me walk you through what we are recommending at each level.
Regardless of level, we continue to recommend that people stay up to date on vaccines and get tested if they’re sick.
Dr. Massetti:
At the low level, there is limited impact on the healthcare system and low amounts of severe disease in the community. People should stay up to date with their vaccines and get tested if they’re sick.
At the medium level, more people are experiencing severe disease in the community and they’re starting to see more impact on the health healthcare system.
At this level, CDC recommends that people who are high risk, such as someone who is immunocompromised, should talk to their healthcare provider about taking additional precautions and may choose to wear a mask. As communities enter into the high level, there is high amount of people experiencing severe disease and high potential for healthcare systems strains.
At the high level, CDC recommends that everyone wear a mask indoors, in public, including in schools. Communities can use these metrics, along with their own local metrics, such as wastewater surveillance, emergency department visits, and workforce capacity, to update and further inform their local policies and ensure equity and prevention efforts.
And these categories help individuals assess what impacts COVID 19 is having on their community so that they can decide if they need to take extra precautions, including masking based on their location, their health status, and their risk tolerance.
Dr. Massetti:
We should all keep in mind that some people may choose to wear a mask at any time based on personal preference. And importantly, people who wear high quality masks are well protected, even if others around you are not masking. And there are some situations where people should always wear a mask.
For example, if they have symptoms, if they tested positive for COVID 19, or if they have been exposed to someone with COVID 19. Today, we’re also updating our recommendations for schools.
Since July, 2021, CDC recommended universal masking in schools, no matter what level of impact COVID 19 was having on the community. With this update, CDC will now only recommend universal school masking in communities at the high level. Importantly, COVID 19 community levels and public health prevention strategies can be dialed up when our communities are experiencing more severe disease and dialed down when things are more stable. So what do these updated metrics mean for where we are as a country, as of today, more than half of counties representing about 70% of Americans are in areas with low or medium COVID 19 community levels.
This is an increase from about one third of counties at low or medium community levels last week and we continue to see indicators improve in many communities. Thank you. And I will now hand it back to Dr. Walensky.
Dr. Walensky:
Thank you, Dr. Massetti, before we take your questions, I would like to leave you with a few final thoughts. None of us know what the future may hold for us and for this virus and we need to be prepared and we need to be ready for whatever comes next.
We wanna give people a break from things like mask wearing when our levels are low and then have the ability to reach for them again, should things get worse in the future.
We at CDC will continue to follow the science and epidemiology to make public health recommendations and guidance based on the data. Our new framework was rigorously evaluated both with current data and retrospectively during the Alpha, Delta and Omicron waves and these new metrics have demonstrated predictive capacity for weeks into the future. We will continue to evaluate how well they perform in our communities.
This new framework will best way for us to judge what level of preventive measures may be needed in our communities.
If or when new variants emerge or the virus surges, we have more ways to control the virus and protect ourselves and our communities than ever before. Thank you. I’ll now turn it back over to you, Benjamin.
Benjamin Haynes:
Thank you, Dr. Walensky and thank you, Dr. Massetti. Ted, we are ready to take questions.
Operator:
The phone lines are now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question over the phone, please press star one and record your name.
We also ask that you just limit yourself to one follow up question. If you would like to remove your question, please press star two. One moment please. And the first question accused from Dr. Jon LaPook with CBS news, your line is not open.
Dr. Jon LaPook:
Hi, thank you. Thanks for this update and we’ve heard that, you know, the best mask is the one people will wear, but let’s assume somebody’s incentivized to wear the best mask they can and they’re gonna try to get it well fitted. Can you be more granular about which mask provide the best protection is an N 95, KN-95, KF-94.
surgical cloth. What should people who want to protect themselves the most, which of the masks they should be using? Thanks.
Dr. Walensky:
Maybe I’ll start with that. Thank you, Dr. LaPook. Of course we’ve said in our prior masking guide that infiltration are key in those, the N-90-
Dr. Massetti:
It sounds like we might have lost Dr. Walensky.
I think what she was noting was that we often have emphasized that fit and filtration are really critical and there are a variety of ways to achieve that.
One way is to use a respirator, um, like an N-95 or a KN 95. They provide good fit and filtration for people, and they provide high protection to the wearer. There are other options as well, including using a surgical mask or a surgical mask layered with a cloth mask. And also we have on our website resources to show people how to knot and tuck the ear loops on mask to improve fit and filtration as well.
Dr. Jon LaPook:
Right, no, of course, we all, thanks. We all see people with wearing just sort of a plain cloth and maybe it’s underneath the nose, but I was just wondering if you wanted to emphasize what’s the best case scenario for people since, since it just says, wear a mask.
Dr. Massetti:
So CDC recommends that that people should wear the mask that has the best protection and filtration for them and that they will wear consistently.
Dr. Jon LaPook:
Thanks.
Benjamin Haynes:
Next question, please.
Operator:
Next question is from Ron Lin with the Los Angeles Times, your line is now open.
Ron Lin:
Hey, I was wondering, can you go into how you came up with the details of the metrics for those three levels and what the science is based off of them in terms of numbers. And where would a place like LA county, which has tied its local mask mandate to CDCs old mask recommendations? Where would they lie? Would they no longer be required to no longer be recommended to wear masks? Thanks.
Dr. Walensky:
I’m back. So maybe I’ll get started and pass it over to you, Dr. Massetti, thanks for filling in there. So, one of the things that was really important is we have more and more people and more and more immunity in the population. We wanted to make sure that we were focusing on severe disease because we do want to prevent severe disease. We want to prevent hospitalizations. We want to prevent our hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. So our metrics were really with that in mind, what are severe, how much severe disease is happening, and then to use those metrics to understand, can we find levels where we can predict outcomes in the future where we might be able to act on them now to avert those outcomes in the future. Bad outcomes, like ICU stays, high levels of death. So maybe I’ll pass it over now back. So Dr. Massetti to give you more granular detail.
Dr. Massetti:
Great. Thanks so much, Dr. Walensky. So as Dr. Walensky noted, we were really focused on measures of healthcare strain and severe disease. And so we conducted an extensive review of all data systems that are reported to CDC and often available on our website on COVID data tracker. We reviewed all data sources and really assess them against several criteria, including do they measure severe disease or healthcare strain? How well do they provide data that is available at the local level where it can really inform local decisions? And do we have national coverage for all counties in the United States? And are they reported frequently enough to be able to inform timely decisions? And based on that thorough review, we refined the list and came up with these indicators, including new hospital admissions and hospital beds utilized and complimented them with case incidents to really create a package of metrics to be able to understand happening at the local level.
Benjamin Haynes:
Next question, please.
Operator:
Next question is from Drew Armstrong with Bloomberg News, your line is now open.
Drew Armstrong:
Hi, Drew Armstrong from Bloomberg news. I’m wondering, thinking ahead, are there other COVID metrics or measures that CDC has using or collecting that should be overhauled or refined as we move into whatever this next phase of the pandemic is? And, if so, what are some potential examples of that?
Dr. Walensky:
So we have, we certainly look at comprehensive data and we get a whole stream of data, some that are different by jurisdiction. So for example, we just last week posted our wastewater data, and we anticipate that our wastewater data, while we have 400 sites posted, and that represents about 53 million Americans, that is still focal. And we really want are working to expand that. So we intend to double that over the next month or so. Syndromic surveillance would be another way that we could expand some of these metrics again. As Dr. Massetti said, it’s really important as we come up with national metrics that we have coverage from every county, not every county is reporting syndromic surveillance, although we’re working to scale that up as well. So we have on our eye on many different metrics, which is why we hope that these metrics that we’re releasing today will be very helpful for policy makers, but we also hope that local jurisdictions will take into account all the information that’s available to them.
Benjamin Haynes:
Next question, please.
Operator:
Next question is from Helen Branswell with STAT. Your line is now open.
Helen Branswell:
Hi, thank you very much for taking my question. I know, I think this is gonna be an irritating question, but when you talk about, you know, the metrics about, you know, the percentage of people in hospital beds who are, there because of COVID, is that for COVID or with, I mean, will the with COVID people also be part of those calculations?
Dr. Walenksy:
Helen, that’s a great question. We have spent a lot of time thinking about this. And let me tell you sort of where we landed and why. First, we are considering anybody in a hospital bed with COVID, regardless of the reason for admission and that the reason that we landed there is multifold. First many jurisdictions can’t differentiate. So that w