continue to make recommendations, but ultimately, it s up to state and local officials to decide what s best for their communities. every state has rolled back indoor mask mandates, except for hawaii. take a look at the yellow and green areas. these are locations where strain on the healthcare system is not considered high, where the c.d.c. says mask requirements can be rolled back. but masks are still advised in the orange areas, where there s a potential for high levels of severe disease and strain on healthcare systems. also new tonight, the c.d.c. now only recommends universal school masking in communities at the high level. still, the nation s largest school district, new york city, where the community level is low, announced today students must stay masked indoors. well, the new c.d.c. gienessz does not impact current mask mandates covering public transportation. those remain in effect until march 18, and tonight, it s unclear if they will be extended. but today, the c.d.c. did e
on the number of cases. states that had higher vaccination and booster rates had lower hospitalization and death rates. we are still living in a time when we have even preschoolers being told they have 2 where masks inside. oakland making children where masks but we have this objective evidence demonstrating mask mandates don t have a benefit and one of the largest studies of school masking, 600,000 kids in spain should children who are masked versus unmasked, not a noticeable step down, they look at 5-year-olds and compare them to 6-year-olds and above and whether they were wearing masks did not make a measurable difference in transmission. what they did see is the older of the child the more likely to
variant may be more transmissible than, krohn but we are still seeing natural immunity, vaccine induced immunity is providing good protection against severe illness and that is the goal. when we move forward it will not be about universal mandates, just like when you think about seasonal allergies and you see pollen updates, people who have seasonal allergies know that pollen levels are high and take certain precautions, maybe we need covid alerts in the same way so people who are at higher risk or vulnerable can take those precautions but for the general population at this point we cannot see these universal restrictions especially those that are not backed up by data like school masking in schools and generalized mask mandates. the mitigation efforts we did at the beginning of the pandemic did not show much benefit.