New York City schools will lose the masks this week, and the city's vaccine requirements for restaurants, gyms, and movie theaters will likely expire next week and not be reinstated, according to the New York Times, as new not-peer-reviewed data show poor COVID-19 vaccine protection in kids 5 to 11 years old.
NY, Illinois lift mask mandates
"New York City's #COVID numbers continue to go down," Mayor Eric Adams tweeted. "So long as our indicators show a low level of risk and we see no surprises this week, on Monday, March 7 we will also remove the vaccination requirements for Key2NYC—meaning indoor dining, fitness and entertainment venues."
Over the weekend New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that statewide mask mandate for school would expire mid-week, and masking decisions would be left to local school officials.
The mask mandate for indoor public places in Illinois ends today, the Chicago Tribune reports. Masks will still be mandatory on public transportation.
The announcements in two of the nation's biggest cities come in the wake of changing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance released late last week. The new recommendations suggest that most of the country could drop indoor mask requirements and say that hospitalization levels and hospital capacity should be the new metrics by which to measure future mandates.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) said in a press release that it supports the CDC's updates to its COVID-19 community guidance.
"The change in guidance reflects the high level of protection that vaccines offer against serious disease and death while recognizing that protections may remain in place in settings where spread is more likely such as health care or large congregate settings," IDSA said.
All states but Hawaii have now removed indoor mask requirements due to dropping case counts.
Poor vaccine protection in kids 5 to 11
New data published on the preprint server medRxiv today suggest that COVID mRNA vaccination for kids ages 5 to 11 does little to prevent new cases.
The research, conducted during the Omicron surge, is based on New York State Department of Health data and shows that protection against infection for 5 to 11 year olds dropped from 68% to 12% within 1 month of full vaccination.
Children ages 12 and older get a larger dose of vaccine, and seem to be more protected, the authors said. The study has not yet been peer reviewed.
"The finding of markedly-lower VE [vaccine effectiveness] against infection for children 11 years compared to those 12 and 13 years, despite overlapping physiology, suggests lower vaccine dose may explain lower 5-11 years VE," the authors wrote.
Cases drop 37% across nation
The 7-day average of new daily COVID-19 cases is 65,721, with 1,897 daily deaths, according to the Washington Post tracker. In the past week, new daily cases fell 37%, deaths fell 14%, and hospitalizations fell 17%.
The United States reported 7,464 new COVID-19 cases yesterday and 182 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracker. In total the country has recorded 78,981,614 COVID-19 cases, including 949,440 deaths.
The CDC COVID Data Tracker shows 64.9% of Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, 76.3% have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 43.6% of fully vaccinated Americans have received a booster dose.
Hong Kong crisis deepens
In global COVID-19 news, meanwhile, Hong Kong's Omicron surge continues to intensify, with officials today reporting 34,446 new cases today, up sharply from last week when daily cases topped 10,000 for the first time.
Hospitals are stretched, with media reports showing patients in hospital beds waiting outdoors for space in a room.
Meanwhile, deaths are also starting to rise, and mortuaries are having a hard time keeping up with the pace, according to Reuters, which said Hong Kong reported 83 more deaths yesterday.
Officials said many of the deaths were in unvaccinated people, including older people who were hesitant about side effects or were complacent owing to the city's earlier success handing the virus.
More SARS-CoV-2 origin clues
In other COVID-19 developments, three new preprint studies, including one from the China Center for Disease Control (China CDC), published over the last few days added new clues that suggest the Wuhan market that was at the center of the early outbreak was the source of the virus.
A news report from Nature, which detailed all three studies, none of which have been peer-reviewed, said the reports bolster earlier suspicions but don't provide a genetic smoking gun.
Scientists who conducted the studies analyzed the SARS-CoV-2 samples collected from the market and, using geolocation, linked many to a part of the market that sold live animals. One of the studies found that the human cases clustered around the market before fanning out across Wuhan.
In another study, a research group that also included scientists from the first study looked at the two earliest lineages, which found enough differences between them to suggest separate introductions from animals to people.
Meanwhile, the team from China CDC described the sequenced genetic material from the positive market environmental samples, which confirm they are nearly identical to those that infected humans. The researchers also noted that the two lineages that circulated in the pandemic's earliest days were both present in the market.
CIDRAP News Editor Lisa Schnirring contributed to this story.
