Fully vaccinated people can ditch their masks and ignore physical distancing both outdoors and indoors in most instances, the Biden administration said Thursday, markedly relaxing its guidance after governors and others complained that excess caution was discouraging people from seeking out the shots.
Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said vaccinated persons are protected from COVID-19 and should start doing the things they stopped because of the pandemic.
She said vaccines have proven to be at least 90% effective at preventing disease in the real world and people who get immunized are far less likely to spread the virus. The rolling average of cases is down to 36,000 per day from an apex of 250,000 in January, while deaths are down to 630 per day from an average of 3,000 during the peak.
The vaccines have performed well against known variants of the virus, prompting the CDC to say the body of science demanded the change.
The relaxed guidance does not apply to health care settings — such as hospitals or doctor’s offices — or in homeless shelters or jails. And masks will still be required on means of public transportation like planes, trains and buses.
The CDC said people should follow any state or local rules on masks and adhere to requirements at workplaces and local businesses, although the updated guidance will likely prod entities to rethink strict rules.
It will be hard for businesses to know who is vaccinated and who is not — vaccine IDs or “passports” are controversial — though the administration is trying everything it can to get more people interested in the vaccines.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, told President Biden on a White House call this week that giving people more leeway in their daily lives was the biggest incentive the president could offer.
“We have fully vaccinated persons. We should start acting like it,” Mr. Cox said.
A person is considered fully vaccinated 14 days after receiving the one-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson or the second dose of a vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.
More than a third of the national population and 45% of U.S. adults were fully vaccinated as of Thursday, according to CDC data.
