CDC to ease masking recommendations for 70% of country, including inside schools

The new metrics will place the majority of the country in low to medium COVID-19 risk.

Some 70% of Americans would be able to remove their masks indoors, including inside schools, under new guidance to be released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to two officials briefed on the plan.

Under the new metrics, more than half of U.S. counties, which make up 70% of where Americans live, will be in areas deemed "low" or "medium" risk because of the reduced number of COVID hospitalizations. The CDC would no longer recommend that these communities insist on indoor masking, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the details ahead of the announcement.

A CDC requirement that people continue to wear masks on public transportation, however, will remain in force for now, according to one official.

The new recommendations represent a seismic shift in how the federal government is approaching pandemic guidance. Under previous rules, the CDC considered primarily COVID case counts to determine risk. And because case counts have remained high, the public health agency has stuck to its recommendation of indoor masking.