On February 25, the CDC updated it’s guidance on COVID-19 prevention steps by transitioning from community transmission rates to community levels. COVID-19 community levels are a new tool to help communities decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data such as hospital beds being used, hospital admissions and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area.
This new guidance, however, does NOT apply in healthcare settings such as hospitals and nursing homes. Healthcare workers should continue to use community transmission rates which looks at county level data and percent positivity based on new cases per 100,000 persons in the past 7 days and percentage of positive NAATs (nucleic acid amplification tests) during the past 7 days. The CDC is working now to determine if any changes will be made for health care settings.
