CDC Says Fully Vaccinated People Can Mostly Stop Wearing Masks

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated its guidance on COVID-19 public health safety by enabling fully vaccinated people to stop wearing masks outdoors and in most indoor spaces.

What Happened: CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Wallensky announced the update Thursday in a press briefing at the White House. Under the new guidance, the agency will no longer recommend that fully vaccinated people wear masks outdoors.

While the CDC is still recommending indoor mask use in crowded indoor settings including airplanes, buses, hospitals and trains, other venues including workplaces and schools can be entered mask-free by fully vaccinated people.

“We have all longed for this moment — when we can get back to some sense of normalcy,” said Walensky. “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physically distancing. If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic.”

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What Happens Next: The CDC estimated that 117 million people are fully vaccinated while 154 million have received at least one of the two-dose vaccines being offered.

What is unclear is determining who is fully vaccinated and who is not, and the CDC has offered no recommendation on the subject. The concept of so-called vaccine passports has faced pushback in several states with the governors of Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and Texas issuing executive orders banning them. Last month, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told said the Biden administration is defaulting on the subject to the corporate world.

"Development of a vaccine passport, or whatever you want to call it, will be driven by the private sector," she said.

(Photo by Juraj Varga / Pixabay.)