CDC Responds to Mask Mandate Claims
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has responded to speculation that the agency could be bringing back mask mandates on public transportation or in federal officials.
A spokesperson for the CDC told The Epoch Times on Aug. 29 that COVID-19 hospital admission levels “are currently low for more than 96 percent” of the United States, but that the agency recommended that transportation workers, travelers, passengers, and others get the COVID-19 vaccine “before they travel.”
“Anyone may choose to wear a mask in crowded or poorly ventilated indoor areas, including on public transportation and in transportation hubs at any time,” the CDC spokesperson said.
The agency also doesn’t currently have any mandate in effect, and the “CDC’s advice for individual and community actions around COVID-19 are tied to hospital admission levels,” the spokesperson said.
Earlier this week, a CDC spokesperson told NBC News that there have been no agency discussions about bringing back mask mandates, which comes as a handful of hospitals and offices around the country started reimposing them this month. There has also been speculation that federal officials may bring back mandates or even push for lockdowns, similar to what happened in 2020.
At the same time, the CDC hasn’t issued any updated guidelines regarding mask mandates on its website.
About a week ago, a report from Alex Jones’s InfoWars claimed that a high-level Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official, who wasn’t named, informed him that lockdowns and mandates would be coming back in the fall. That person cited discussions among agency officials as the basis for his claims.
However, a spokesperson for the TSA told The Epoch Times on Aug. 25 that those claims are false and that the agency “does not have any new requirements and there has not been any meeting on the topic.”
While the “TSA has authority to impose mask-related requirements to implement mask orders from the CDC related to transportation systems,” the “TSA is not imposing mask-related requirements at this time,” the agency stated.
Benjamin Haynes, a spokesperson for the CDC, told The Associated Press at about the same time that reports of upcoming lockdowns are “utterly false.”
Over the past several weeks, COVID-19 hospitalizations have been on the rise across the country, according to CDC data. Despite the increase, it’s among the lowest levels of hospitalization recorded since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.
“An upswing is not a surge; it’s not even a wave,” Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine, told ABC News last week. “What we’re seeing is a very gradual and small upward trajectory of cases and hospitalizations, without deaths really going along, which is great news.”
https://www.ntd.com/cdc-responds-to-mask-mandate-claims_939186.html