AUSTIN (KXAN) — The local health authority announced Tuesday morning Austin Public Health is ditching its current COVID-19 risk-based guidelines system and aligning itself with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) model instead.

It will now follow the CDC’s low, medium and high risk-based model which only recommends masking for people who are up-to-date on vaccines in the high-risk stage.

Travis County is currently in the low-risk category, under that new model, which does not recommend masking for anyone.

“There are people who are still masking, and that’s fine. There are people who aren’t masking, which is also fine, too,” said Catenya McHenry, spokesperson for the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, which is recommending, but not requiring, masks.

She said the center’s programs have returned, and so have private events.

“All of our events across the board — we have more events on the calendar this year than we did last year,” McHenry said.

She said weddings are already booked through 2022.

“We’re taking bookings for next year. And I’ve even learned that people are already starting to ask about 2024,” she said.

All of these were positive signs for the Magnuson family.

“We’re grateful for the opportunity to get back with friends and family and stuff like that,” said Eric Magnuson, who was visiting the wildflower center with his family of four.

They spent a long time staying isolated during the pandemic.

“I was pregnant, and so that was a concern for me — just staying healthy,” said Katie Magnuson. “But overall, we were pretty, pretty restricted, I would say, especially toward the end.”

Dr. Desmar Walkes, Austin’s health authority, noted on Tuesday Texas is seeing an uptick in the number of BA.2 — a more transmissible subvariant of omicron.

“We’re now taking a break, as it were,” she said. “But we still need to be mindful of what has worked in the past to keep our case numbers down.”

McHenry and the Magnusons said they’ll pull back socially, if need be. But for now, they’re taking in the sights and sounds of the community every day.

“I think it’s a day-by-day,” said Katie. “I don’t want to think about it, but we’ll have to take action as needed.”

“I think we just feel more confident to go out and have fun and spend time with other people,” Eric Magnuson added.

Here are the recommendations for people who are up-to-date with their COVID-19 vaccines and don’t have underlying conditions: 

• Low: Precautions optional.
• Medium: Precautions optional when gathering, dining and shopping. Mask when social distancing is not possible. 
• High: Use precautions when gathering, dining and shopping. 

Here are the recommendations for people who are at-risk:

• Low: Precautions optional when gathering, dining and shopping.  
• Medium: Use precautions when gathering, dining and shopping.  
• High: Use precautions when gathering, dining and shopping. 

“Likewise we are going to be updating our dashboard, and it will show our current daily hospital numbers to help the community understand what’s happening on a day-to-day basis locally,” Dr. Walkes said.

That dashboard will move back to focusing on hospitalizations instead of on other metrics, which were introduced during the omicron surge, like community transmission rate.

That data will still be used by local health leaders, however, and the CDC’s model uses similar metrics to what was being used locally to determine risk such as the seven-day moving average of new COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 people and the percent of staff inpatient beds by COVID-19 patients. You can read more about how levels are determined on the CDC website.

You can also use the CDC’s COVID-19 county check tool here:

Austin-Travis County moved to Stage 2 COVID-19 risk-based guidelines at the beginning of March. At that time, health leaders hinted at the possible shift to the CDC guidelines.