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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated the level of community transmission in 10 Nebraska counties, elevating six counties and dropping four by a classification.
With the rise of the Delta variant, there’s now a renewed focus on tracking county-level transmission. The CDC has four classifications for community transmission: low, moderate, substantial and high. Those counties with substantial or high should, under new CDC guidelines, wear masks in some indoor places.
Lancaster County has moved to high, which is likely the biggest change for the state. That does not change masking recommendations, however, as the county was previously classified as substantial transmission.
The change in transmission comes as CDC documents, obtained by the Washington Post and the New York Times, show the Delta variant could be as contagious as chickenpox. The documents said the ability to transmit the variant could be as easy for vaccinated individuals as those unvaccinated.
Here are the changes:
- Antelope: low to high
- Dakota: moderate to substantial
- Dawes: substantial to high
- Frontier: high to low
- Johnson: low to moderate
- Lancaster: substantial to high
- Richardson: moderate to low
- Saline: moderate to low
- Thayer: low to high
- Thurston: high to substantial