Fed change to Jackson Hole shows ability of Delta variant to skew plans

WASHINGTON, Aug.23 (Reuters) – Health officials in Teton County, Wyoming, announced last Thursday what was in part an administrative change, trading a local five-point index to assess COVID-19 risk for a scale four point used by the United States Centers for Disaster Control and Prevention.

But this change quickly pushed the county into the CDC’s highest risk category and moved the Federal Reserve’s plans to hold its central banking conference in Jackson Hole as an in-person event in non-compliance with guidelines. local health issues. Within a day, the US central bank had canceled the in-person portion of the conference at the local hill station.

The annual symposium, hosted by the Kansas City Fed, will still be held online and the content will be the same. Academic research papers will be presented and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will deliver a speech via webcast on Friday.

Yet last week’s sequence of events shows the ongoing daily recalibration on what is and isn’t safe during the current outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, which is fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus. . The Fed’s reaction to a county government’s communications choices has served as a high-profile example of how the pace of economic recovery is being reshaped.

The decision certainly reduced the risks to public health. The guest list for the Fed’s Jackson Hole event had already been cut perhaps in half from a typical crowd of around 150, COVID-19 vaccination was mandatory and masks required inside . The cancellation further eliminated travel and two days of in-person sessions, meals and receptions, as well as a generally large list of side meetings.

It also meant dozens of canceled plane trips, rental cars and hotel rooms for attendees, their families or guests, a press entourage and others, and reimbursement of conference fees. of $ 1,100.

This happened even though nothing changed much between the start of the week, when Fed officials set last-minute plans, and late Friday afternoon, when Fed officials set off. Kansas City canceled the in-person rally “due to the recently elevated COVID -19 health risk level in Teton County, Wyoming.”

Per capita case rates had continued to rise, but a dramatic increase in infections in Teton County began in mid-July and was well underway by early August.

What was different was the scale used by county officials to assess risk. In the CDC’s simplified index, Teton County was now at the red level, or the highest. In fact, the Atlanta-based health agency raised the county’s risk level to “high” on July 22, according to its data online for Teton County. Local guidelines for this level of risk have discouraged gatherings outside of immediate family members.

‘LOTS OF CANCELLATIONS’

The Kansas City Fed said in May, when it announced it was returning to an in-person conference after moving the annual gathering online last year, that it would “follow all health and safety guidelines. which are in place at the time of the program. “

A Kansas City Fed official said the regional bank was monitoring the Teton County Health Department website and made the decision to announce the change after markets closed on Friday based on the change in status .

According to the county’s earlier index, which included a broader set of considerations such as hospital admissions, supplies of protective equipment and availability of testing, the level of risk was also said to have changed last week from moderate to high, said Jodie Pond, county health director.

Local guidelines for this level of risk in the previous system, however, did not recommend family gatherings only, a suggestion reserved for the county’s highest “critical” risk stage.

“There have been a lot of event cancellations and it was not our goal to cancel events if they could be done safely,” Pond said of the recent change. “I don’t want to guess an event planner because I’m always going to err on the side of cancellation, err on the side of caution… I would say it’s probably fine – no one asked us – if people were masked out. inside and had to be vaccinated. “

Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Dan Burns and Paul Simao

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