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Increased Cases May Necessitate Re-masking Mandates

Public Health & Food Safety:

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Recommendations for Industry

Increased Cases May Necessitate Re-masking Mandates

We are continuing to see increases in COVID case rates across the country with some specifically identified hotspots of concern including the states of Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Nevada. With 90% of new cases identified in low vaccination-rate areas, it is becoming more and more obvious that states with higher rates of vaccinations are showing lower incidences of new cases.

With the Delta variant clearly now being the prominent strain – accounting for about 58% of cases in the US, according to CDC, the increase is also leading to increased hospitalizations (especially of those in their 20s to 40s) and is likely to lead to increased death rates within the next month. However, if the US is to follow the UK trends, with this year’s current wave of cases mimicking the autumn 2020 wave, the cases should cause fewer hospitalizations and deaths, potentially because Delta is impacting younger, healthier populations.

At this point, TAG recommends businesses take a watchful approach, keeping an eye on case rates in your areas and keeping an even closer eye on your employees. Anyone with symptoms should stay out, and if you do have an outbreak in your workforce, re-masking mandates should be implemented immediately.

With the increases being seen, TAG is receiving numerous client questions on parameters for potentially reversing, or just slowing, the relaxation of worker COVID protections. To assist in your efforts, we are doing a full assessment and will be providing more information in next week’s newsletters, and the Return to Work Toolkit. (Contact TAG for more information on the toolkit.)

 

Risk Matrix

TAG’s Matrix is showing:

  • The Government Stringency Index is 21 this week. This is down from 23 last week, indicating a decrease in government stringencies.
  • Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming have a TPR ≥ 5% and a case rate ≥ 10/100k people.
  • No states have a TPR < 5% and a case rate ≥ 10/100k people.

As you can see in Table 1, below, case rates for Arkansas and Missouri have exceeded 20 cases/100k population, which puts these states in a fairly high-risk situation. Similarly, over the past 2 – 4 weeks, case rates have steadily climbed above 10 cases/100k in Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. In these latter states, the Test Positive Rates are all above 5% and vaccinations are on the lower end (all below 40% of the population are fully vaccinated).

Table 1.

Increased Cases May Necessitate Re-masking Mandates

Figure 1.

Increased Cases May Necessitate Re-masking Mandates

Table 2.

Increased Cases May Necessitate Re-masking Mandates

Table 3.

Increased Cases May Necessitate Re-masking Mandates

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