More Democratic governors ease mask requirements: "We have to learn to live with COVID"
CBSN
Illinois, New York and Rhode Island on Wednesday became the latest Democratic-led states to announce forthcoming changes to their statewide mask requirements, as more blue states begin to lift restrictions nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic.
The announcements from Governors J. B. Pritzker in Illinois, Kathy Hochul in New York and Daniel McKee in Rhode Island came just after California, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon governors said they would be easing some of their masking requirements in the coming weeks.
Taken together, the policy changes mark a turning point for Democratic governors who have kept COVID restrictions in place in schools and reinstated some requirements more broadly amid the Omicron surge. And they have gone ahead of the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which continued Wednesday to recommend masking in areas of high or substantial transmission.
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