Health News at Your Fingertips

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, announced she would allow the state’s indoor mask requirement to lapse tomorrow. Customers at most businesses in New York had previously been required to wear masks or show proof of coronavirus vaccination. “Given the declining cases, given declining hospitalizations, that is why we feel comfortable to lift this, in effect tomorrow,” Hochul said this afternoon.
• The chair of House Democrats’ campaign arm applauded Hochul’s decision, which comes days after several other Democratic governors announced plans to relax mask requirements. “It’s time to give people their lives back,” Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney said. “With science as our guide, we’re ready to start getting back to normal.”
• However, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency continues to “recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission”. According to the CDC’s own data, 99.5% of all US counties currently qualify as areas of high and substantial transmission, even as the number of new coronavirus cases across the country has decreased in the past few weeks.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Over at the White House pandemic response briefing, Dr Anthony Fauci was asked about the potential need for another round of coronavirus vaccine booster shots.

Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, said that health experts would continue to track data on infections and hospitalizations of vaccinated individuals to get a better sense of if and when another booster shot is necessary.

Fauci also emphasized that recommendations for more booster shots will likely be tailored to specific populations who may be at higher risk of becoming severely ill from coronavirus, such as the elderly.

“There may be the need for yet again another boost, in this case a fourth-dose boost, for an individual receiving the mRNA that could be based on age, as well as underlying conditions,” Fauci said.

“So I don’t think you’re going to be hearing, if you do, any kind of recommendations that will be across the board for everyone.”

Speaking in New York City, Governor Kathy Hochul said she was not yet relaxing the mask mandates for schools, even as she let the mask-or-vax requirement for most businesses lapse.

The Democratic governor said she would revisit the issue of mask requirements for schools next month, after students return from the winter break scheduled for late February.

“After the break, after we have kids tested, we’re going to make an assessment in the first week of March,” Hochul said.

The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has officially announced that she will allow the state’s indoor mask requirement to lapse tomorrow.

Customers at indoor businesses had been required to wear masks or show proof of coronavirus vaccination, but Hochul said the time had come to lift that “emergency temporary measure”.

“At this time, we say that it is the right decision to lift this mandate for indoor businesses and let counties, cities and businesses to make their own decisions on what they want to do with respect to mask or the vaccination requirement,” Hochul said.

“Given the declining cases, given declining hospitalizations, that is why we feel comfortable to lift this, in effect tomorrow.”

Several other Democratic governors have announced plans this week to relax mask requirements, and the governor of Illinois is expected to outline a similar policy today.

However, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said moments ago that the agency continues to “recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission”.

According to the CDC’s own data, 99.5% of all US counties currently qualify as areas of high and substantial transmission, even as the number of new coronavirus cases across the US has decreased in the past few weeks.

A reporter asked Dr Rochelle Walensky whether the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon offer guidance to governors about relaxing coronavirus-related restrictions.

“We are working on that guidance. We are working on following the trends for the moment,” Walensky said at the White House pandemic response briefing.

But Walensky added, “Our hospitalizations are still high, our death rates are still high, so as we work towards that and as we are encouraged by the current trends, we are not there yet.”

Several Democratic governors announced earlier this week that they would move to relax mask mandates for schools, and the governors of New York and Illinois are expected to announce similar plans today.

Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just said that the agency continues to recommend masking in “areas of high and substantial transmission”.

According to the CDC’s own data, 99.5% of all US counties currently qualify as areas of high and substantial transmission, even as the number of new coronavirus cases across the US has decreased in the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, several Democratic governors are moving to relax coronavirus-related restrictions, with Kathy Hochul of New York expected to let her state’s indoor mask mandate expire tomorrow.

The White House pandemic response team has been repeatedly asked about several Democratic governors moving to relax mask mandates in response to the recent decrease in coronavirus cases.

Jeff Zients, the White House pandemic response coordinator, said the US is “moving toward a time when Covid won’t disrupt our daily lives,” and he emphasized the importance of using tools like vaccines to get to that point.

“We certainly understand the need and desire to be flexible, and we want to ensure the public health guidance that we’re providing meets the moment that we’re in,” said Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“But at this time, we continue to recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission.”

The White House pandemic response team is now holding a press briefing, and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided an update on trends in coronavirus cases and deaths.

Dr Rochelle Walensky noted that the seven-day average of new coronavirus cases in the US is now about 247,000 per day, marking a 44% decrease from a week earlier.

But the CDC director added that deaths have increased slightly, by about 3%, compared to last week, and the US has now crossed the grim threshold of 900,000 total coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic.

While several Democratic governors are moving to relax coronavirus-related restrictions, Walensky emphasized the importance of making data-driven decisions when it comes to pandemic response policies.

“I know there will come a time when we move from a phase of crisis to a point where Covid-19 is not disrupting our daily lives,” Walensky said.

“And as we all look forward to this next step, I want to instill in everyone that moving forward from this pandemic will be a process that’s led by our surveillance and our data. I’m confident that CDC and our public health partners are well positioned to lead the way.”

As several Democratic governors move to relax mask mandates because of the decrease in coronavirus cases, Republicans are accusing them of belatedly embracing a new approach to pandemic response.

“Keep in mind as you see blue states lift mask mandates and Democrats try to claim credit: The science on COVID hasn’t changed. The political science has,” Congressman Brad Wenstrup said on Twitter. “Remember: Republicans have fought to allow Americans to sensibly and methodically move past the pandemic. Democrats haven’t.

Wenstrup’s message was retweeted by House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who has previously accused Joe Biden of failing to deliver “a realistic response to the virus”.

Of course, Republican governors have been criticized for refusing to enact policies, such as mask mandates in schools, that would have helped to limit the spread of the virus during past surges in cases.

Now that coronavirus cases are decreasing across the country, a growing number of Democratic governors seem more comfortable with relaxing some of the restrictions they put in place to respond to those surges.

The White House pandemic response team will soon hold a briefing, and its members will likely be asked about the push to ease mask requirements in several Democratic-led states.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden will participate in a roundtable with CEOs of electric utilities this afternoon to discuss his Build Back Better economic agenda. The secretary of energy, Jennifer Granholm, is also expected to attend.

Both of those events are still coming up, so stay tuned.

Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of House Democrats’ campaign arm, has said it is “time to give people their lives back,” as the country’s number of coronavirus cases decreases.

“Democrats’ plan to fight COVID is working – cases are down & vaccines are widely available. Now, it’s time to give people their lives back,” the congressman said on Twitter. “With science as our guide, we’re ready to start getting back to normal.”

Maloney, whose district includes some of the northern suburbs of New York City, also applauded Joe Biden and New York Governor Kathy Hochul for their pandemic response policies.

“We are making tremendous progress thanks to their strong, science-based leadership,” Maloney said. “I fully support the decision to roll back mask mandates.”

Maloney’s tweet comes as Hochul is expected to let New York’s indoor mask mandate lapse tomorrow, as the state reports a sharp decrease in coronavirus cases.

The Guardian’s Peter Walker and Ian Sample report on the UK’s plans to relax coronavirus restrictions:

Boris Johnson plans to abolish the last Covid restrictions in England, including the requirement for people with the virus to self-isolate, in less than two weeks, a month earlier than initially proposed, he has announced.

In an opening statement to prime minister’s questions, Johnson said he hoped to do this as soon as the Commons returned from its upcoming recess, on 21 February.

“I can tell the house today that it is my intention to return on the first day after the half-term recess to present our strategy for living with Covid,” he said.

“Provided the current encouraging trends in the data continue, it is my expectation that we will be able to end the last domestic restrictions, including the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive, a full month early.”

The plans to end all restrictions were announced by Johnson last month, when he unveiled the scrapping of so-called plan B measures such as mask use.

Read the Guardian’s full report:

While some Democratic governors push for easing coronavirus restrictions as number of coronavirus cases decreases, the Biden administration seems a bit more hesitant to do so.

Joe Biden met with a bipartisan group of governors at the White House last week, and one Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, said the president was pushed on the need to return to some sense of normal in the US.

“There’s a number of areas that we have full agreement on, and that is one: we need to move away from the pandemic,” Hutchinson said, per CNN. “And we asked the president to help give us clear guidelines on how we can return to a greater state of normality.”

But Biden sounded a more cautious note, telling the governors, “I think it’s all about making sure we have the same standards we’re applying across the board.”

It’s important to note that, while coronavirus cases have decreased in the past few weeks, the number of Americans dying from the virus remains alarmingly high.

As of Monday, the seven-day average of daily coronavirus deaths in the US was 2,404, according to the data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.

The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, is expected to let her state’s indoor mask mandate lapse tomorrow, joining several other Democrat-led states that are easing restrictions as coronavirus cases decrease.

Earlier this week, the governors of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon announced plans to lift mask requirements in schools, and JB Pritzker of Illinois is also expected to outline his offramp strategy for mask mandates later today.

“We are not going to manage Covid to zero,” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said Monday. “We have to learn how to live with Covid as we move from a pandemic to an endemic phase of this virus.”

The easing of restrictions comes as many states, particularly those that were hit early by the surge in cases causes by the Omicron variant, report lower numbers of infections.

According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US is now averaging about 250,000 new cases a day. And while that is still high, it is a fraction compared to the 800,000 new cases a day that the country was seeing in mid-January.

Those declining numbers have given some governors, even those who may have been previously hesitant to relax restrictions, the confidence to start doing so.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.