CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending indoor mask use in counties with high rates of transmission, including for vaccinated people.
According to this interactive map provided by NBC News, with data from the CDC, 13 of the 15 Coastal Bend counties fall under this recommendation.
Area counties that are included in this recommendation:
Nueces county
Kleberg county
Aransas county
Brooks county
Refugio county
San Patricio county
Duval county
Jim Wells county
Live Oak county
Bee county
Kenedy county and Jim Hogg county are the only areas in the Coastal Bend that do not fall under the CDC's mask-wearing recommendation as of Thursday.
Search for the case rates, testing rates, and transmission level by county here.
How does the CDC determine which areas are more at risk?
If a county's level of virus transmissibility averages 50 or more cases per 100,000 people, that county will fall under the CDC's indoor mask-wearing recommendation for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. A county that has a test-positivity rate equal to or greater than 8 percent will also fall under the new guidance.
The new recommendations from the CDC come with reports of the COVID-19 delta variant causing an uptick in cases and hospitalizations all over the globe.
Vaccines remain as the best tools in the battle against COVID-19 and its variants. But although it helps decrease severe complications, the nature of the new variants still poses a high transmission threat.
"The Delta variant has a very unusual capability of spreading much more easily than the Alpha did,"said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in an interview with PBS's Judy Woodruff. "And the other data we're having right now is that, when people get breakthrough infections, when they're vaccinated and they get infected, even when they have a situation where they don't have an advanced disease, they clearly can transmit it to other people."
There are several options to get vaccinated in the Coastal Bend. Explore those options here.