The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 no longer need to wear masks or physically distance — whether indoors or outdoors in most circumstances.
“We have all longed for this moment when we can get back to some sense of normalcy,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a media briefing Thursday afternoon.
“Based on the continuing downward trajectory of cases, the scientific data on the performance of our vaccines, and our understanding of how the virus spreads,” Walensky said, “that moment has come for those who are fully vaccinated.”
President Joe Biden called the move a “great milestone” during remarks at the White House Thursday, adding that it was “made possible by the extraordinary success we’ve had in vaccinating so many Americans, so quickly.”
More than 35 percent of the population has now been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
Outside experts in infectious disease overwhelmingly hailed the CDC’s move to lift masking recommendations for vaccinated Americans.
“Today marks a true turning point in the pandemic,” said Dr. Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting CDC director. “If you’re fully vaccinated, you are good to go. That’s huge.”
“It’s exactly what we ought to be doing right now,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “I think it follows the best science.”
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the move is “long overdue.”
“Our goal was to tame this virus, to defang and to remove its ability to threaten hospitals,” Adalja said. “I think we’ve accomplished that in the United States.”
The new recommendations come more than a year after the CDC first recommended that Americans should wear masks to protect against spreading or catching the coronavirus. At that time, the U.S. was logging more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths a day.
The new recommendation is proof, Walensky said, that the vaccines are working extraordinarily well. She cited several studies from both the U.S. and Israel that demonstrated vaccines are more than 90 percent effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19.
There are a few caveats to the guidance, however. People who have compromised immune systems, for example, should talk to their doctors about continuing with mitigation measures. And even fully vaccinated people may still be asked to wear masks in certain places, such as in hospitals or other health care settings, as well as public transportation.
“Right now for travel, we’re asking people to wear their masks,” Walensky said. “We still have the requirement to wear masks when you travel on buses, trains and other forms of public transportation.”