Two more US governors lift mask mandates

Governors in two more US states on Wednesday announced plans to lift mask mandates as polls show that Americans appear to be accepting the continuing spread of the coronavirus as part of everyday life.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, said he would not extend a mask requirement in schools, and it will end Feb 28.

In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul became the latest Democratic governor to lift a mask mandate for most indoor public places, as the virus surge eases.

She said at a news conference that it will end Thursday. The state will still require masks in healthcare settings and on public transportation. Hochul has said she needs more time to decide on masks in schools.

The moves by the Democratic governors to drop mask mandates goes against what has been the stated position of Democratic President Joe Biden and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But The New York Times reported Wednesday that the White House has been meeting with outside health experts to plan a pandemic-exit strategy and a transition to a "new normal''.

And Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said at a briefing Wednesday, "We are working on that guidance; we are working on following the trends for the moment. Our hospitalizations are still high; our death rates are still high. So, as we work toward that and as we are encouraged by the current trends, we are not there yet."

But on Tuesday, Walensky had told Reuters that with COVID-19 cases still high nationwide, "now is not the moment" to drop mask mandates in schools and other public places.

Recent polls show Americans are frustrated by the continuing pandemic restrictions; many want them all dropped, while others support some preventive measures.

Seven in 10 respondents to a January poll by Monmouth University agreed that "it's time we accept COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives".

A recent Yahoo News/YouGov survey found that 46 percent of respondents thought Americans should "learn to live with" the pandemic "and get back to normal", while 43 percent thought "we need to do more to vaccinate, wear masks and test".

An Axios/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday showed a majority of Americans wanted to "move toward opening up" and less than half of those respondents — or just 21 percent of all Americans — said they supported going back to life as usual with "no coronavirus mandates or requirements".

The poll's data shows Americans are divided about evenly into four camps on coming to terms with living with COVID: drop all mandates and requirements, keep some, keep most or add even more.

The moves by the Massachusetts and New York governors follow announcements this week by governors in New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, California and Oregon — all Democrats — that they were lifting mask mandates for schools and other public settings.

The governors of New Jersey and Connecticut said school districts would be able to set their own masking policies in coming weeks. Delaware's governor signed an order to lift the state's indoor mask mandate effective Friday. Oregon's state health authorities have said indoor-mask requirements would lapse at the end of March.

All cited the receding Omicron-fueled wave of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and COVID-19 deaths that began sweeping the United States during the year-end 2021 holiday season.

Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said, "Americans' worries about COVID haven't gone away. It seems more to be a realization that we are not going to get this virus under control in a way that we thought was possible just last year."

The Monmouth poll also finds faith in the ability of Biden and the federal government to get a handle on the pandemic continues to fade amid persistent opposition from nearly 1 in 5 American adults to getting vaccinated.

More than 5.7 million deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 worldwide, including over 909,000 in the US, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

About 64.2 percent of the US population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the CDC.

Last week, the US reported the highest number of newly confirmed coronavirus cases and COVID-19 deaths of any country in the world, according to an update released Tuesday by the World Health Organization (WHO).

More than 1.8 million new cases were reported in the US during the week of Jan 31 to Feb 6, a 50 percent decrease compared with the previous week, WHO said. More than 14,000 new fatalities were also reported, a 15 percent decrease.