INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Dr. Jerome Adams, WISH-TV’s medical expert and a former U.S. surgeon general, talked Wednesday on News 8 at 6 p.m. about the Biden administration’s extension of a mask mandate for public transportation.
Adams noted that the mask mandate for public transportation has been in place since February 2021, and the discussions about relaxing the mandate. The mandate would have expired Monday if it hadn’t been extended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I actually think that’s the right thing to do,” Adams said. “We know that cases are starting to go back up in some places: 20% rise across the nation, 50% rise in places like Philadelphia. That’s actually exponential growth at this point in time.
“We know it takes about two weeks for you to see cases turning the hospitalizations so that gives CDC a little bit of time to collect the data and make an informed decision about whether to relax these mandates.”
Adams added that CDC leadership also told him the mandate was extended because “now just didn’t feel like the right time.”
“The reasons that they gave: No. 1, we’re coming off the spring break. No. 2, we still have (children) under 5 who are unable to be vaccinated, and, No. 3, again, we know that if we give ourselves just two weeks, we will be able to collect more data and see if cases are continuing to increase or if we de-linked cases from hospitalizations and it’s actually safer to relax that mask mandate. We know that once we get rid of them — we’ve seen it in the past — it’s a whole lot harder to bring them back.”
Will adding two weeks really make a difference?
“I think it’s like a fair question that people ask, and the honest answer is that we know that when we see chases go up traditionally we’ve seen hospitalizations go up in about two weeks and then we’ve seen deaths go up in about four weeks. We’re hopeful that because so many people have now gotten vaccinated and boosted — most important lesson: get your vaccine, get your booster if you haven’t gotten it yet — that we’ve seen a de-linking, meaning that cases aren’t necessarily correlating with hospitalizations to the extent that they were previously. If we continue to see that trend over the next two weeks, then that will give the CDC much more confidence to say, ‘OK, we can get rid of these mandates’
“Another thing that could happen in the next two weeks is that under 5 could get approval for vaccinations and then more people would be able to protect themselves.
“Those two variables, I think, are going to be big in terms of the CDC ultimately making evidence-informed decision.
“I’ve given them a lot of flak in the past, but I think they’re doing the right thing here. Better to go with two more weeks of discomfort and make an informed decision than to regret it based on making a hasty decision.”
