White House's new COVID czar Ashish Jha told NBC's "TODAY" show on Monday, April 11, that the federal mask mandate for public transportation, including planes, buses, trains, transit hubs, and airports, may be extended by the United States government.
The mask mandate is scheduled to expire next Monday, April 18. Jha said that this is a decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and he thinks the extension is absolutely on the table. Jha added that the director of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, will make her decision based on the framework that the scientists in her federal agency will create, and they will make a decision collectively based on that.
The mask mandate has been extended several times already since the directive went into effect back in February of last year. Before that period, the U.S. government strongly recommended mask-wearing on trains and planes, but it was not federally mandated.
CDC developing scientific framework to determine if mask mandate will stay
According to Jha, Walensky is now working on developing a scientific framework that would determine whether to prolong the mask requirement rule. Jha said they would see that framework come out, he thinks, in the next few days.
The expiration of the mask mandate in the United States looms as the BA.2 omicron subvariant, which accounted for about 72 percent of the cases in the country as of last week, and is more contagious than the original omicron variant, is driving up COVID-19 cases in states like New York, Arizona, and Nebraska.
According to a report by NPR, the state of Philadelphia announced on Monday that it would reinstate its indoor mask requirement next week after COVID cases increased by more than 50 percent in the last ten days.
Overall, the United States has seen a nearly 6 percent increase in the average number of daily COVID cases over the last two weeks. However, many disease experts believe that the current number of COVID infections is dramatically undercounted.
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Attorneys general sue Biden administration over mask mandate
The mask mandate was a contentious issue in the U.S. Just last month, the attorneys general from 21 states sued the administration of President Joe Biden over the mask mandate for transportation, according to a report by Forbes. The suit says that the CDC should have allowed states to carry out their own mandates or tailored its restrictions to modes of public transportation that carry the highest risk of COVID infection. All but three of the attorneys general that sued are from Republican-led states.
U.S. airline executives also asked Biden to end the mask requirement, writing a letter to the President last month for this request. In early March, the American Public Transportation Association also made a similar plea to the White House, asking the government to re-evaluate its mask policy. Both of these letters cited growing challenges with enforcing the mask mandate.
