CDC tells vaccinated Americans they can ditch masks indoors
People who are fully vaccinated against CO🎉VID-19 can safely stop wearing mas﷽ks and social distancing in most circumstances, the CDC said Thursday in new guidance.
“Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities – large or small — without wearing a🗹 mask or physical🉐ly distancing,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a briefing.
“If you are fully vaccinated, you can st🤡art doing the thingsꦡ that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic.”
Walenksy said the new guidance also applies to crowded outdoor settings, such as at concerts, which the agency was still advising people to mask up for two weeks ago.
“You certainly could wear a mask if you wanted to but we are saying in those settings based on the science that it is safe,” she told reporters.
The agency, however, still encourages wearing masks in crowded indoor settings like prisons, hospitals and homeless shelters — as well as while on transportation such as buses, trains and planes.
“Right now for travel, we are asking people to continue to wear their masks,” Walensky said, noting that the agency will update its guidance as more science becomes available about transmission risks on public transportation.
Walensky said the CDC will also be revisꦅiting its guidance for other settings, such as workplaces, schools and summer camps.
“We have work ahead of us in terms of updating our guidance with regard to all of our settings,” she said.
The new announcement comes two weeks after the CDC said that fully vaccinated people could safely ditch their masks outdoors. At the time, the agency said the risk of COVID-19 transmission is less than 10 percent — but experts said this week that figure is still way overstated, and the risk is likely less than 1 percent.
The Biden administration had been facing pressure to further roll back COVID-19 rules for vaccinat⛎ed peop♛le in order to incentivize more Americans to get the shot.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who is the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, called on the US last month to “more aggressively” lift restrictions, saying that the country no longer needs to be concerned this time around th🥃at when “we take out foot off the brake, things are going to surge again.”
“I think oftentimes a mistake we make is that we’re quicker to implement these precautions than we are to lift them because we’re worried that once we lift them, we won’t be♔ able to reimplement them,” Gottlieb
“I think we need to lean♍ more aggressively forward and look at ways to try to relax some ✱of the provisions that don’t really make as much sense anymore.”
“Right now, the 🍸declines that we’re seeing, we can take 🅰to the bank,” he said.
“I think we could feel more assured because they’re being driven by vaccinations and greater levels of population-wide immunity, not just from🌳 vaccination, but also from prior infection.”
More than 116 million adults in🍸 the US — or about 45 percent — have been fully vaccinated as of Thursday, and at least 151 million, or nearly 59 percent, have received at least one dose, according to the CDC.
Still, vaccꦜination efforts are just getting underway with younger c🍨hildren.
The feds on Wednesday approved Pfizer’s vaccine for teens age 12-15.
But it’s still unclear when COVID-19 shots will be available for younger kids.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has said the company plans to apply for emergency use authorization for tꩲh꧃e shot for kids ages 2 to 11 in September, .
President Biden announced a new goal eaꦿrlier this month to get 70 percent of A🦩mericans to have at least one shot by July 4.
“Now that we have the vaccine supply, we’re focused on convincing even more Americans to show up and get the vaccine that is availab🍌le to them,” Biden sℱaid.
“If we succeed in this effort, as we did with the last then Americans will ha�ﷺ�ve taken a serious step towards a return to normal.”
