Nine of Vermont’s 14 counties now fall under federal recommendations for universal indoor masking, with five reporting the highest category of Covid-19 spread under standards set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC recommends that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people wear masks in indoor public settings in all nine counties.
State officials, however, have stopped short of making the same call.
“I still think it’s a personal choice,” Gov. Phil Scott said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “I think you have to make decisions depending on your risk, who is in your family, who is in your household, so to speak, and whether you should be going to events inside where you might pick up the variant. Again, I think you have to do your own risk assessment and then make your own decision at that point.”
Unvaccinated people should always wear masks indoors, said Health Commissioner Mark Levine. But if vaccinated people choose to mask up “as an extra layer of protection indoors, especially if it’s crowded or if you travel, that’s OK too,” Levine said. “Do what makes sense for you and your personal comfort level, and do so knowing you should not be judged for that.”
The conflicting recommendations come as cases continue to surge because of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.
As of Tuesday, Chittenden, Essex, Franklin, Orleans and Washington counties reported “high” Covid spread, which the CDC defines as more than 100 cases per 100,000 residents in the past week.
Bennington, Caledonia, Lamoille and Windham counties showed “substantial” spread, defined as more than 50 cases per 100,000 residents.
The health department reported 85 new cases on Wednesday, putting the state’s seven-day average at its highest point since April 21. Hospitalizations remain elevated: 23 people are currently hospitalized with Covid, and seven of those people are in intensive care.
The seven-day average test positivity rate is 3.2%.
Scott said Tuesday that he intends to mandate vaccination for employees of certain state institutions, but no other statewide mandates are planned. In order to compel private institutions to mandate vaccination or testing, Scott said, “we’d have to reissue the state of emergency, and we’re not willing to do that at this time. There’s no need for the state of emergency.”
Scott and Levine also expressed confidence in recent state guidance for K-12 schools. The two-page memo issued last week does not address vaccination of school employees. It mandates universal masking for the first two weeks of school, then allows mask rules to be dropped for those 12 and older when 80% of the vaccine-eligible population in a school has received both shots.
Experts have said those guidelines fall short in protecting students and staff.
Liz Winterbauer, a consulting epidemiologist and health services researcher, said Wednesday that she was “perplexed” at the state’s decision to deviate from CDC recommendations.
Children under 12, who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated, are a substantial population of vulnerable Vermonters, said Winterbauer, who also teaches health courses at UVM and St. Michael’s College.
“We’re putting those children at risk by not masking indoors, by not giving schools more guidance and more encouragement to do all of the mitigation measures that we have seen to be successful in the past, by not encouraging testing of vaccinated individuals so that we get more data on breakthrough infections that can assist us in making public health decisions,” she said.
More caution is needed while questions remain about breakthrough infections and the risks of the Delta variant to children, Winterbauer said.
“We need to basically throw everything we can — do all those mitigation measures that we have — at this virus until we know more about it. Because the risks are too high, particularly for children,” she said.