The White House said earlier this week the United States is moving towards a "time when COVID is no longer a crisis" as national hospitalization rates continue to improve from their mid-January highs.
Jeff Zients, White House COVID response coordinator, said during a press briefing on Wednesday the nation has made "tremendous progress" in its effort to combat the pandemic, highlighting that 75% of adults are fully vaccinated and over 60% of eligible adults have received a booster shot.
In addition to vaccines, Zients said that the U.S. now has strong tools like free at-home testing and high-quality face masks, as well as a range of effective treatments and therapeutics like the COVID pills developed by Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), which are up to 90% effective at preventing severe illness and hospitalization.
"As a result of all this progress and the tools we have now, we're moving toward a time when COVID isn't a crisis but is something we can protect against and treat," Zients told White House reporters. "The President and our COVID team are actively planning for this future."
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), echoed this sentiment, stating that the agency is reviewing its mask guidance and is shifting its focus towards hospitalizations as a key measure of an outbreak's severity instead of new case numbers.
"We are assessing the most important factors based on where we are in the pandemic, and we'll soon put guidance in place that is relevant and encourages prevention measures when they are most needed to protect public health and our hospitals," Walensky told reporters. "We want to give people a break from things like mask-wearing, when these metrics are better, and then have the ability to reach for them again should things worsen."
Walensky said the seven-day average of hospital admissions is about 9,500 per day, a decrease of about 28% over the previous week. Moreover, the seven-day average of daily deaths are about 2,200 per day, down about 9% from the prior week. According to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 71,000 patients are currently in U.S. hospitals due to their COVID infections, down from mid-January's peak of nearly 160,000.
The CDC currently recommends individuals weak masks in indoor public spaces regardless of their vaccination status is they live in an area of high viral transmission, which is nearly every county in the country, according to CDC data. The agency also recommends people, regardless of vaccination or transmission level, should wear a mask for 10 days after a positive COVID diagnosis.
"As we have fewer cases, people will become more comfortable with taking off their mask, but we will certainly want people to have the flexibility to wear one if they so choose," Walensky said.
The Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads faster than past strains due to its highly mutated nature. However, unlike previous variants, Omicron's unprecedented spread across the U.S. did not lead to high hospitalization and death rates compared to the high levels of infection rates. This is due to the prevalence of highly effective vaccines and treatments that were not available during previous waves of infections.