BREAKING NEWS: CDC will release new guidance recommending fully vaccinated Americans wear masks indoors in Covid hot spots
- CDC will recommend on Tuesday that fully vaccinated Americans to put masks back on indoors in some situations
- Reversal of guidance released by the agency in May, allowing vaccinated people to unmask
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will recommend on Tuesday that vaccinated Americans should wear masks indoors in some situations, The New York Times has reported.
It is a reversal on the decision to the CDC made on May 13, saying fully vaccinated Americans were safe to unmask indoors in a majority of situations.
Americans who live in COVID-19 hotspots will be expected to mask up indoors, according to the new guidance.
The decision comes as cases across the United States are growing once again due to the highly contagious Indian ‘Delta variant.
Over the past month, the average new daily cases across the country have increased five-fold.
CDC will recommend on Tuesday that fully vaccinated Americans to put masks back on indoors in some situations. Pictured: People wear face coverings as they pass through Union Station in Los Angeles, California, July 2021
The CDC’s initial decision to lift the mask mandate in May was met with some push back from health experts.
Some, like Dr Anthony Fauci, said that it was confusing guidance that may make some believe the pandemic is over.
Others feared that unvaccinated Americans would unmask despite not being protected from the virus.
Currently, around 56 percent of Americans have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, and half of the country is fully vaccinated.
That means that more than 40 percent of Americans, and 30 percent of adults, are not vaccinated at all.
A large portion of unvaccinated people are congregated in a few areas in the U.S. south and the northwestern plains.
States with low vaccination rates, like Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas are getting hammered by the variant.
Some pockets of Florida, a state with a comparatively higher vaccination rate of over 50 percent, is getting slammed as well.
There have also been some doubts over how protected some people who are vaccinated are from the Delta variant.
Data from Israel, where a majority of people have received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, shows the variant could regularly cause ‘breakthrough’ cases among the fully vaccinated.
There has also been a rise in Delta breakthrough cases in the United States.
The variant accounts for around 70 percent of active cases in the country.
This is a breaking story that will be updated.