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As COVID-19 case numbers continue a nationwide decline, the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to ease its recommended restrictions in the next few days.
The move comes as the federal government seeks to shift from crisis mode aiming to stop all new infections to more of a management phase, which will target a reduction in hospitalizations and deaths.
The guidelines are expected to advise health officials to allow most Americans to use indoor venues without wearing face masks. It's unclear whether the relaxed measures will apply to federal mask mandates requiring facial coverings on public transportation or to school mask restrictions.
Current CDC guidelines suggest that communities wear masks if they have high local COVID-19 transmission rates and high numbers of new cases. But because most cases among the vaccinated often have had relatively mild symptoms, the CDC is expected to start telling health officials to advise their mask guidances on other metrics, such as hospitalizations and local hospital capacity, the Associated Press reported.
If local and state health officials follow the CDC's new guidelines, they will allow most Americans to go without wearing masks indoors.
Newsweek contacted the CDC for comment.
COVID-19 cases across the U.S. have rapidly declined since January 14, when 933,326 cases were reported nationwide. As of Wednesday, only 84,478 cases were reported nationwide—a nearly 91 percent decrease.
But despite the decline in new cases, the number of deaths nationwide remains at moderate levels. While 3,024 deaths nationwide were reported on Wednesday, the record number of deaths in a single day is a little more than 5,000, reported February 4.
All U.S. states with the exception of Hawaii have either ended indoor mask mandates for businesses or announced an end date for such mandates.
The leaders of Utah, Vermont, California and various cities have announced plans to start moving toward treating COVID-19 as if it's an endemic, which means as a disease that regularly spreads among people and never completely disappears.
However, recent polling suggests that Americans may not feel ready to give up masks entirely. About one-third of respondents in a recent YouGov/Economist poll said they continue to wear masks outside the home, and 52 percent expressed support for continuing mask mandates.
Nearly 60 percent said they didn't expect it to be safe to resume normal life activities until July or later, if at all; 18 percent expected life to return to normal by the second half of 2022; 27 percent said they expected normalcy starting in 2023 or later; and 14 percent said life will never return to normal.
Despite those results, 47 percent of poll respondents said they felt the worst of the pandemic was behind us, and many have resumed public socializing. Nearly 49 percent had gone out for meals in restaurants, 47 percent said that they had recently visited friends and 22 percent said they had attended a religious service in person.
