CDC loosens mask guidelines

By Geoffrey Woehlk | March 3, 2022 |

COVID-19 Community Levels

MARYVILLE, Mo. — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week announced new relaxed masking guidance that includes the removal of the federal mandate for masks to be worn on school buses.

The mandate for all other transportation methods covered under the original order, like airplanes, remains in effect.

The new mask guidelines are tied to a new metric called Community Level. The CDC determines a county’s Community Level by using the number of new COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 population over the past seven days, percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients and total new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population in the past seven days.

According to the new CDC recommendations, if the Community Level is:

Low

Wear a mask based on your personal preference, informed by your personal level of risk

Medium

If you are immunocompromised or at high risk of severe illness, talk to your health care provider about additional precautions, such as wearing a mask or respirator indoors in public
If you live with or have social contact with someone at high risk for severe illness, consider testing yourself for infection before you get together and wearing a mask when indoors with them

High

Wear a well-fitting mask indoors in public, regardless of vaccination status or individual risk (including in K-12 schools and other community settings)
If you are immunocompromised or at high risk for severe illness, wear a mask or respirator that provides you with greater protection

More information on mask guidance for specific circumstances from the CDC at cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov, along with other information about COVID-19.

More free tests

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced that Americans who have already received a free COVID-19 test kit from the federal government will be eligible for another round starting next week.

Each household in the country is eligible to have four at-home antigen tests shipped to their home for free beginning in January. Next week, households that have already received their first shipment will be eligible for another four tests.

The tests are available through covidtests.gov or by calling 800-232-0233.

Local stats

The rate of new COVID-19 cases in Nodaway County continues to hover around its lowest level since last October since dropping off significantly from the unprecedented spike earlier this year.

As of March 1, the most recent data available from the Nodaway County Health Department, there were 21 active cases of COVID-19 in the county and two hospitalizations. Thirty-nine have died since counting began in spring 2020, the latest added to the total on Tuesday.

More than 5,900 people in Nodaway County have tested positive for COVID-19 since spring 2020 — more than a quarter of all residents.

New vaccination rates in the county also remain slow, which local health officials have said they don’t expect to change.

As of March 1, about 50.5 percent of Nodaway County residents — 10,729 — have been fully vaccinated, which means they have received the initial two-shot regimen of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

So far, 12,002 county residents have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, or about 56.5 percent of the county, according to the CDC’s online vaccination dashboard. Of those who have been vaccinated, 4,515 have received a booster dose, or about 42.1 percent of fully vaccinated individuals in the county.

In Missouri, about 65.2 percent of residents have received at least one dose, and about 55 percent are fully vaccinated. Of the fully vaccinated, about 40.9 percent have received a booster.

Across the country, the CDC estimates 76.5 percent of Americans have received at least one dose, 65.1 percent have been fully vaccinated, and 43.8 percent of fully vaccinated individuals have received a booster.

Individuals ages 5 and up are eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

The CDC recommends all adults ages 18 and older should receive a booster shot for COVID-19, regardless of which vaccine an individual first received.

Those who received a Pfizer or Moderna vaccination series initially will become eligible six months after the final dose, and Johnson & Johnson recipients are eligible two months after receiving their shot.

Officials at MMC-M and the health department have reported that nearly all patients hospitalized locally are unvaccinated and vaccination can help avoid the worst outcomes.

Contact the Nodaway County Health Department at 660-562-2755 to make an appointment for vaccination or for more information.

Why are The Forum’s numbers different than everyone else’s?

BY GEOFFREY WOEHLK | THE FORUM

There are two areas where the COVID-19 statistics The Forum publishes each week won’t match up with what you’ll find from other sources: vaccinations percentages and, starting with this issue, the Community Level.

For vaccinations, the numbers are different because of two decisions we made last year to use the most accurate data possible.

State data

First, in September, we stopped using vaccination data provided by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services because it was too incomplete to pass on as truly reliable to our readers.

The major omission from the state vaccination numbers is that they only take into account vaccines that have been distributed by the state because those vaccinators are required to report back their vaccination statistics. Vaccines distributed through any other means, like through federal programs that sent vaccines to many chain pharmacies and stores (including Walmart), aren’t included in the state’s vaccination data.

As of Tuesday night, that resulted in a little over 100 fewer vaccinations reported in Nodaway County through the state dashboard than through the CDC. That’s why we switched over to using CDC data, which includes both the state-reported numbers and reports from federal agencies, providing the most complete picture we can get.

But that issue caused us to take a hard look at other DHSS data. Once we did, we found that even accounting for the built-in lag time in reporting cases of COVID-19, the state-reported case numbers simply did not correspond to what the Nodaway County Health Department was reporting.

You can still easily see it in the numbers today. As of Tuesday, the DHSS online dashboard showed a total of 5,627 confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 in Nodaway County.

Using the health department’s numbers, the county surpassed that total on Jan. 31, more than a month ago, and never hit that exact figure.

Those two issues are why you are unlikely to find any DHSS-reported COVID-19 data in The Forum.

Census

But the biggest difference between our numbers and the ones you’ll see from any other source is that starting in August, we began using the 2020 U.S. Census data.

This came into play in the Feb. 17 edition of The Forum, when we reported that more than half of all Nodaway County residents had been vaccinated. Even two weeks later, the CDC estimate is still only 48.6 percent, and the state’s estimate is 48.1 — surely leaving some readers puzzled as to how we came to that conclusion.

We opted to make that change because of the large drop in the county’s population recorded in the 2020 Census.

However, both the CDC and DHSS continue to use Vintage 2019 Census estimates, which are based on the 2010 Census. Those figures put Nodaway County’s population at 22,092 — about 800 more than the 21,241 counted in the 2020 Census.

Those are 800 people who can’t get vaccinated because they don’t exist, so we decided to stop counting them in the vaccination percentage. Instead, we use the raw number of vaccinations reported by the CDC and divide that number by the latest Census data for the county, state and national levels.

Community Level

In this edition of The Forum, you’ll see a new metric: Community Level. This is used by the CDC as part of its new mask recommendations, and because case counts have been low lately, we’re going to replace the box you see every week that showed the daily new cases over the last seven days with a box showing the Community Level.

However, the displayed Community Level on the CDC’s website does not match up with the CDC’s own methodology on how to figure it.

As of Tuesday night, the CDC’s website indicates that Nodaway County has a Community Level classification of High.

However, following the agency’s directions on how to calculate Community Level using the data provided by the CDC itself, the classification appears that it should actually be Low since the case rate is below 200, the new admission rate is below 10 and the inpatient bed percentage is also under 10.

Consequently, the Community Level reported in this week’s paper is Low, which also aligns more with the numbers we’ve seen reported by the health department.

It’s possible this is just a wrinkle the agency is ironing out as it integrates the new metric into its online tools. But at the moment, we’re going to keep figuring the Community Level manually while we keep an eye on how or if the CDC adjusts its formula.

That means, like the other numbers explained above, the Community Level classification reported in The Forum may differ from what you see from any other news source. We’ll continue to be transparent in where we get our data from and how we use it so that you can be sure the numbers you see here — especially the ones you only see here — are the most accurate picture possible of our community.