As Virus Spreads, C.D.C. Draws Up an Urgent Battle Plan

With coronavirus infections soaring across the nation, federal health officials on Friday urged Americans in the most forceful language yet to take steps to protect themselves — starting with consistent, proper use of masks — and pressed local governments to adopt 10 public health measures deemed necessary to contain the pandemic.

The guidance reflected deep concern at the agency that the pandemic is spiraling further out of control and that many hospitals are reaching a breaking point, potentially disrupting health care across the country.

Agency officials have issued increasingly stark warnings in the waning weeks of the Trump administration, and President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has promised a new national strategy to turn back the virus. On Thursday, Mr. Biden said he would call on Americans to wear facial coverings for 100 days.

To some experts, the C.D.C.’s appeal appeared to augur a more comprehensive and coordinated national approach to controlling the pandemic — one consistent with messages from Mr. Biden and his advisers....

Though the agency has issued all of the recommendations in earlier guidance, the new summary represented the first time the C.D.C. had published a multipronged list of strategies for states, a sort of battle plan.

“This idea of a 50-state solution is completely impractical when we live in one nation,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We are not going to get past this pandemic unless we have a concerted national approach.” ...

Officials warned that eating at indoor restaurants was one of the “particularly high-risk scenarios” because diners had to remove their masks. The C.D.C. urged communities to require face coverings on mass transit, something Mr. Biden also has endorsed, and to expand routine screening to identify asymptomatic individuals, who are responsible for about 50 percent of transmissions. ...