US CDC recommends majority of Americans wear masks: media

LOS ANGELES - The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that nearly 70 percent of the country's population should either be wearing or considering wearing masks inside public spaces, US News and World Report reported.

According to data from the CDC, 33 percent of Americans should be masking while indoors and an additional 36 percent should be considering the measure based on their risk for severe COVID-19 as of Thursday, the news outlet reported on Friday, noting that the percentage of Americans who should be wearing a mask indoors in public spaces or considering the measure is increasing as the United States heads into the holiday weekend.

Coronavirus cases in the United States are increasing slightly while hospitalization rates are also up. The country is currently averaging nearly 110,000 new cases each day, which is about 10,000 more infections than the average a week prior, said the report.

The majority of states are seeing increasing COVID-19 infections, the report added, citing data from Johns Hopkins University.

The development came after two new Omicron subvariants that are highly transmissible took over as the dominant strains circulating in the country. Experts have predicted that the subvariants - BA.4 and BA.5 - could lead to a small increase in cases or, at the very least, an extended plateau of the latest coronavirus wave, according to the report.