Those vaccinated against COVID-19 will need to wear masks only in crowded indoor situations and are able to forgo them while outside, even in crowds, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will say on Thursday, according to someone briefed on the news who spoke anonymously, the Associated Press reported.
People who have received the vaccine can stop wearing masks indoors as long as the area is not crowded like public spaces such as buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters. The new guidance could ease restrictions in place for workplaces and schools.
“I would like to say that we have fully vaccinated people; we should start acting like it. And that’s a big motivation to get the unvaccinated to want to get vaccinated,” Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox told President Joe Biden during a virtual meeting Tuesday with some bipartisan governors that included discussing vaccinations.
Biden responded: “Good point, we’re going to be moving on that in the next little bit.”
Two weeks ago, the CDC still recommended that those fully vaccinated keep face masks on inside and in large crowds outdoors. The new announcement follows pressure faced by Biden and the CDC to ease COVID-19 restrictions on vaccinated citizens.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
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The announcement comes as the CDC and the Biden administration have faced pressure to ease restrictions on people who are two weeks past their last required COVID-19 vaccine dose—in part to highlight the benefits of getting the shot.
The new guidance comes as the aggressive U.S. vaccination campaign begins to pay off. U.S. virus cases are at their lowest rate since September, deaths are at their lowest point since last April and the test positivity rate is at the lowest point since the pandemic began.
To date about 154 million Americans, more than 46% of the population, have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines and more than 117 million are fully vaccinated. The rate of new vaccinations has slowed in recent weeks, but with the authorization Wednesday of the Pfizer vaccine for children aged 12 to 15, a new burst of doses is expected in the coming days.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, was set to announce the new guidance on Thursday afternoon at a White House briefing.
During the virtual meeting Tuesday, Biden appeared to acknowledge that his administration had to do more to model the benefits of vaccination.
The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the announcement ahead of the official release. The White House did not comment on the matter.
Evidence from the U.S. and Israel shows the vaccines are as strongly protective in real-world use as they were in earlier studies, and that so far they continue to work even though some worrying mutated versions of the virus are spreading.
The more people continue to get vaccinated, the faster infections will drop — and the harder it will be for the virus to mutate enough to escape vaccines.
And while some people still get COVID-19 despite vaccination those infections tend to be milder, shorter and harder to spread to others.
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