Experts say it’s too soon to lift mask mandates as variants spread – Business Insider

As COVID-19 case numbers continue to drop in the US, some states have lifted their mask mandates.

Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota let his state's mask mandate expire in January. Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa said earlier this month that Iowans no longer had to wear masks in public. And Montana's new Republican governor rescinded his Democratic predecessor's state-wide mask mandate last week.

The drop in coronavirus cases has been cited in decisions to lift restrictions, and, indeed, all three states are down from their November peaks. But infectious-disease experts told Insider that while the dropping case counts were promising, it might be too soon to make dramatic changes in restrictions, especially when it comes to masks.

"It's completely too soon," Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California at San Francisco, told Insider.

"It goes against the grain of what President Biden is trying to do, which is a national strategy that we never had," he said. "COVID doesn't restrict itself by state borders."

Chin-Hong said individual states' lifting mask mandates echoed the situation in the US last year, when he said the lack of a national strategy hindered efforts to restrict coronavirus transmission.

Even as President Joe Biden's administration has vamped up vaccinations, Chin-Hong said coronavirus variants were a big concern.

"The vaccine rollout is progressing everywhere, but it probably won't be able to protect the population fast enough," he said.

The experts Insider spoke with all said that there were encouraging signs but that the US was still in a race to vaccinate before virus variants spread more widely.

For Iowa specifically, Chin-Hong noted that several cases of the B.1.1.7 variant had been discovered there this month.

He called those cases only "the tip of the iceberg," given the limited work being done to identify the variant.

The B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the UK, is known to be more transmissible than the original strain. British scientists have also become increasingly convinced that the variant could be deadlier as well.

The variant has been detected in 44 states, and Chin-Hong said it would most likely be the country's dominant strain by March. If states continue to lift restrictions like mask mandates, it will increase the likelihood for B.1.1.7 to spread.

In Iowa, a state that has dramatically lifted restrictions, Chin-Hong said the virus was "probably having a party right now."

B.1.1.7 is just one of many coronavirus variants circulating in the US. And it's possible that more will emerge, making it an evolving issue with lots of uncertainty.

"We're entering a phase where it's harder to know what the near-term future is like," Andrew Noymer, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California at Irvine, told Insider.

He said his expectations for what would happen throughout the pandemic such as the summer and winter surges had largely been accurate. But, he said, for the first time he felt as if he really didn't know what the immediate future would look like regarding the pandemic.

Cindy Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida, agreed that it's too soon to be lifting mask mandates.

"The thing is, we still have COVID circulating and don't have the majority of people vaccinated," she said, adding that while case numbers were lower than they were during the holiday surge, they're still not at ideal levels in most places.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 63 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the US. About 13% of Americans have received their first dose, while less than 6% are fully vaccinated, NPR reported.

To reach herd immunity, an estimated 65% to 80% of a population needs to be immune.

The Biden administration is well on its way to achieving its goal of administering 100 million vaccine shots in its first 100 days, and it has plans to further ramp up vaccinations. The president's team hopes to vaccinate all eligible adults by the end of summer, the Associated Press reported.

But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who is also Biden's chief COVID-19 medical advisor, has said priority groups won't finish getting vaccinated until sometime in April.

If the more-transmissible B.1.1.7 variant is expected to be dominant by March, that leaves a lot of time for it to circulate in environments with loosened restrictions.

"It is really a race against time," Prins said.

Before dramatically lifting restrictions, she said, states should have a combination of low transmission as well as a high number of fully vaccinated people to reach a "balance where we feel like we're not going to have widespread transmission."

"We'll get to that point," she said. "But we're not there yet."

Despite concerns over variants, Noymer of UC Irvine said it's reasonable for states to reevaluate restrictions as case numbers drop.

"People are getting antsy," Noymer told Insider. "What you don't want to have is a situation in which people don't want to follow any restrictions because they feel it's all too strict."

Noymer said loosening restrictions could even have an overall positive effect in some situations. For instance, he mentioned California, where an outdoor-dining ban in the fall sparked outrage and even prompted some restaurants and local jurisdictions to flout the rules.

Noymer considers this a significant problem because it risks some restrictions being viewed as meaningless.

Gov. Gavin Newsom reopened outdoor dining in California late last month, prompting some to wonder whether the decision came too soon. But Noymer said it just brought the restrictions closer in line with reality in some places, which can go a long way in maintaining the public's trust.

"I'd like to have these orders still have some meaning when in the fall we might face a new wave with variants," Noymer said.

But as far as what kinds of restrictions can safely be lifted, he said "masks should be among the last to go."

He said relative to other aspects of life that had been disrupted by the pandemic, masks were a minor inconvenience relative to their public-health benefits.

"We know that masking is really important for prevention," Prins said, adding that to keep case numbers from rising again it's crucial for people to continue wearing masks and physical distancing until more Americans can be vaccinated.

Masks may be one of the last parts of the pandemic to go away, as Fauci even said on Sunday that it's possible Americans will be wearing masks into 2022, when life might begin to look a bit more "normal."

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Experts say it's too soon to lift mask mandates as variants spread - Business Insider