Residents in nearly all counties in New York state are being recommended to wear masks due to high case-counts of COVID-19, continuing a trend seen since mid-April, according to new data released Friday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of Friday, 54 of the state's 62 counties, up from 45 a week ago, are now classified by the CDC as having "high" community levels of the coronavirus.

The CDC uses a "high," "medium" and "low" classification, which is determined by the number of new cases in the county per 100,000 people in the past seven days; the number of new hospital admissions with COVID-19 in the past seven days per 100,000 people; and the percentage of staffed inpatient beds in use by patients with COVID-19 within a seven-day average.

As of Friday, there is only one county in the state — Orange — that has a classification of "low." In Western New York, the counties of Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Alleghany were upgraded to "high" this week from "medium," while the counties of Cayuga, Madison, Cortland, Hamilton and Sullivan were downgraded from "high" last week to "medium" this week.

With a "high" level, the CDC recommends wearing masks in indoor public areas and on public transportation. There are currently no local mask requirements in these areas, outside of the statewide requirement for them in bus and train stations, prisons, state-regulated care settings and homeless shelters. Recently, Albany County's health department again recommended masks in indoor public places.

The number of “high” counties has risen steadily since mid-April, starting with ones in Central New York, the region which was the first in New York to have confirmed cases caused a new BA.2 omicron subvariant known as BA.2.12, state officials said at the time. 

Nationwide, there are 297 counties the CDC said have “high” levels of COVID-19, up from 137 a week ago. The vast majority of "high" counties are in the Northeast.

According to state data released Thursday by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, the state’s seven-day average of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people stood at 48.99, down slightly from a week ago. In recent weeks, New York health officials and those in other states have started using cases per 100,000 residents, and not the more traditional percentage of positive results of those who have been tested, as a more accurate way of measuring infection rates.