Should you keep wearing masks? What experts say as mandates end on public transit
Mask mandates on public transportation are ending, and some health experts are worried.
The TSA announced this week that it will no longer enforce mask mandates after a U.S. federal judge ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t have the authority to keep the public transportation policy in place, according to previous reporting done by McClatchy News.
Following the ruling, several airlines announced that masks would now be optional in airports and on flights. Public transportation systems across the country and ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft also announced that while masks still are recommended, they are no longer mandatory, McClatchy News reported.
Here’s what experts say about the move.
‘This is not the right time’
Abraar Karan, an infectious disease physician at Stanford University, told Bloomberg that “this is not the right time to get rid of masks,” adding that making individuals responsible for mitigating risk is “not how to stop a pandemic.”
Similarly, Leonard Marcus, co-director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard, told Insider that removing the mask mandate increases “the risk of transmission at a time when we’re seeing a surge in the BA.2 variant.”
He added that he recommended passengers continue wearing masks, the outlet reported.
As of April 13, COVID-19 cases are on the rise in some areas of the U.S., and the BA.2 omicron subvariant continues to dominate cases, McClatchy reported.
Dr. Kavita Patel, a former policy director in the Obama administration, told CNBC that she worried the move is “unfortunately going to come back to bite us, because we’re not necessarily doing the types of things we should be doing.”
“The CDC continues to advise and recommend masks on airplanes,” press secretary Jen Psaki said in an April 19 press briefing. “We’re abiding by the CDC recommendations, the president is. And we would advise all Americans to do that.”
All eyes are now on the CDC as the Justice Department announced it will appeal the judge’s decision if the agency says the mandate is still necessary, according to an April 19 statement.
“The Department continues to believe that the order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health,” the statement said.
Can airplane filters clean COVID-19 from the air?
According to the International Air Transport Association, “the quality of supplied air on board an aircraft is much better than most indoor environments.”
But airlines officials added that the combination of the air quality as well as the requirements for masks, vaccination or negative tests is what made the risk of contracting COVID-19 onboard so low.
While ventilation systems on planes do work, “if you have somebody who’s sitting in the row in front of you who’s coughing, the air handling system’s not gonna help you with that,” Gigi Gronvall, an epidemiologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Insider.
Most Americans still support mask mandates
The ruling comes as a majority of people in the U.S. still support mask mandates on public transportation — compared with 24% who oppose them, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted before the ruling was announced.
Similarly, about half of the respondents said they support requiring people to wear masks during crowded events like concerts or movies as well as masks for workers at restaurants or stores.
That being said, concerns about COVID-19 infections are the lowest they have been since February 2020, with only 20% saying they are very worried about getting infected, according to the poll.
The poll was conducted between April 14 and 18 with 1,085 adults in the U.S. The results in this poll have a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points, according to the methodology.
This story was originally published April 20, 2022 at 3:40 PM with the headline "Should you keep wearing masks? What experts say as mandates end on public transit."
