In one map designed to help the public understand COVID-19 risk at the community level, New Jersey — like 95% of the nation — is shaded green, indicating no masks are needed for public indoor spaces.

But most of the Garden State is colored red — a warning of high viral spread — in another COVID-19 community-focused map from the same organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with five southern counties painted orange, for substantial, or yellow, for moderate transmission. New York and New England are almost entirely red and orange in this map, while Pennsylvania is mostly yellow.

The disparities in the community COVID-19 maps — and the sharply different messages they communicate — have raised concerns for public health leaders, some of whom took to Twitter to vent their frustration when the CDC promoted its largely green version late last week. They called the agency’s actions deceptive and said they would contribute to infection levels, which are already on the rise in many areas, including New Jersey.

The Centers’ “community transmission” map, which colors most of New Jersey red, is based on the seven-day change in COVID-19 case rate and the percentage of positive tests, according to the website. The “community levels” map, in which the state is all green, reflects hospital capacity and involves data on admissions and the percentage of COVID-19 patients in treatment, over seven days.

Concerns about CDC focus

CDC officials — who did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday — launched the hospital-data-based “community levels” map in early March, announcing with some fanfare that the data meant the vast majority of Americans could go maskless. In New Jersey, COVID-19 hospitalizations continued to decline through March, but ticked up to 400 patients again in early April.

The CDC’s new focus on hospital capacity is a concern for Stephanie Silvera, an epidemiologist and public-health professor at Montclair State University, who said it could contribute to new upticks in COVID-19 case numbers.

“By shifting our focus to risk relating to hospital patients, that means we’re going to be too late to respond,” she said. “It’s a lagging-indicator issue.”

“We have essentially decided again, we are tired of public-health measures, we are tired of prevention, so we’re going to back into a treatment mode. Instead of trying to prevent people from getting sick” by controlling the viral spread, Silvera continued, “we’re going to shift the burden back to the individual and wait until people are at the hospital and then treat them.”

Scaled-back response

COVID-19 cases had plummeted nationwide in the wake of the omicron-variant surge early this year but have ticked up recently in some regions, including New Jersey. After a three-month decline the state’s transmission rate, a critical indicator of spread, has been on the rise for months and weeks ago passed a threshold showing the spread of the virus is hastening again. More than 2.2 million New Jerseyans have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and some 33,300 have died as a result, according to state data analyzed by NJ Spotlight News, which created its own county-based map to show changes in infection rates, among other tools.

As the impact of the pandemic slackens, the COVID-19 response is being scaled back here and elsewhere. Federal funding has dried up for some services, like vaccinations, testing and treatment for those without insurance. Schools and workplaces aren’t testing as much as they were in the past and, with many people opting for home-based screening kits, less information about new cases is flowing to state and federal agencies.

That also worries public-health professionals like Silvera. “We don’t even have a good way of getting our arms around what community-level transmission is. Whatever we think we’re seeing, in terms of the numbers of cases and the rate of transmission, the numbers are higher,” she said.

‘When you pull out a big green map, that signals to people ‘COVID is over.’

The trend has not gone unheeded in some places. On Monday, Philadelphia reinstated its indoor mask mandate due to rising cases, and American, Columbia, Georgetown and other universities are calling for a return to masking in classrooms, according to news reports. Montclair State University has required face-coverings all year, Silvera said.

A political message?

While experts often recommend the CDC’s COVID-19 resources, it is not clear how popular the maps have been with the public. (The New Jersey Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard also features a county-level map reflecting confirmed cases.) But the federal agency’s messaging raises other concerns for Silvera.

“What I do think is important about the CDC’s map is it provides essentially a political message about how to address COVID and what policy to put in place,” Silvera said. “When you pull out a big green map, that signals to people ‘COVID is over,’ she added, which raises other questions like, “Why are you telling me to wear a mask?”

Silvera also worries about what this more permissive message means for those who are immunocompromised due to a chronic condition, like lupus, or from medical treatment, like chemotherapy.

“We’ve all talked about the emotional impact” of the pandemic, she said, “and now we’re telling people who are already largely homebound to be more so, all so I don’t have to put a mask on?”