(The Hill) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is looking at recommending that Americans wear higher-quality masks amid the COVID-19 omicron variant surge, a CDC official told The Washington Post.
“The agency is currently actively looking to update its recommendations for KN95 and N95 in light of omicron,” said the official, who asked not to be named. “We know these masks provide better filtration.”
However, as the higher-quality masks have been known to be uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time, the CDC would say in new guidance that if a person can “tolerate wearing a KN95 or N95 mask all day, you should,” according to the Post.
The agency was wary of recommending that people wear N95 or KN95 masks at the beginning of the pandemic due to concerns that doing so would cause a shortage of those masks for health care workers, per the outlet.
Americans would have to be careful about which higher-quality masks they obtain, as the CDC has said 60% of the KN95 masks in the U.S. are fake, the Post noted.
The updated recommendation comes as the spread of the omicron variant has driven a renewed spike in COVID-19 cases, with early studies showing that the variant is more transmissible and more able to evade immunity gained from vaccines than past strains of the virus.
The U.S. on Tuesday broke its COVID-19 hospitalization record after individual states such as New York and Florida recently broke their daily COVID-19 case records.
The Hill has reached out to the CDC for comment.