4 Arizona counties safe from COVID without masks, according to new CDC system

PHOENIX – It’s now safe for healthy Arizonans in four counties, including Maricopa, to stop wearing face masks in public indoor spaces, according to federal COVID-19 guidelines released Friday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlined the new set of measures for communities where COVID-19 is easing its grip, with less of a focus on positive test results and more on what’s happening at hospitals.

Healthy Americans in counties deemed to have low or medium community COVID levels are safe without masks, according to the CDC, but those where the community level is high should still keep their faces covered in indoor public spaces.

Coconino, Maricopa, Santa Cruz and Yavapai counties are currently at medium, while Arizona’s 11 other counties are in the high range, per the new CDC classification system. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, is home to over 60% of the state’s population.

The new system greatly changes the look of the CDC’s risk map and puts more than 70% of the U.S. population in counties where the coronavirus is posing a low or medium threat to hospitals. Those are the people who can stop wearing masks, the agency said.

The agency is still advising that people, including schoolchildren, wear masks where the risk of COVID-19 is high. That’s the situation in about 37% of U.S. counties, where about 28% of Americans reside.

The new recommendations do not change the requirement to wear masks on public transportation and indoors in airports, train stations and bus stations.

The CDC guidelines for other indoor spaces aren’t binding, meaning cities and institutions even in areas of low risk may set their own rules.

And the agency says people with COVID-19 symptoms or who test positive shouldn’t stop wearing masks.

But with protection from immunity rising — both from vaccination and infection — the overall risk of severe disease is now generally lower, the CDC said.

“Anybody is certainly welcome to wear a mask at any time if they feel safer wearing a mask,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a news briefing.

“We want to make sure our hospitals are OK and people are not coming in with severe disease. … Anyone can go to the CDC website, find out the volume of disease in their community and make that decision.”

Since July, CDC’s transmission-prevention guidance to communities has focused on two measures — the rate of new COVID-19 cases and the percentage of positive test results over the previous week.

Based on those measures, agency officials advised people to wear masks indoors in counties where spread of the virus was deemed substantial or high. This week, more than 3,000 of the nation’s more than 3,200 counties — greater than 95% — were listed as having substantial or high transmission.

That guidance has increasingly been ignored, however, with states, cities, counties and school districts across the U.S. announcing plans to drop mask mandates amid declining COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

With many Americans already taking off their masks, the CDC’s shift won’t make much practical difference for now, said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. But it will help when the next wave of infection — a likelihood in the fall or winter — starts threatening hospital capacity again, he said.

“There will be more waves of COVID. And so I think it makes sense to give people a break from masking,” Noymer said. “If we have continual masking orders, they might become a total joke by the time we really need them again.”

The CDC is also offering a color-coded map — with counties designated as orange, yellow or green — to help guide local officials and residents. In green counties, local officials can drop any indoor masking rules. Yellow means people at high risk for severe disease should be cautious. Orange designates places where the CDC suggests masking should be universal.

How a county comes to be designated green, yellow or orange will depend on its rate of new COVID-19 hospital admissions, the share of staffed hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients and the rate of new cases in the community.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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