Report: CDC to Issue Guidance Permitting Vaccinated People to Sometimes Go Maskless Indoors

A couple wearing face masks talks on the bench in a park of Miraflores ahead of Lima's tot
Raul Sifuentes/Getty Images
Wendell Husebø

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will reportedly permit vaccinated people to forgo masks at work and school Thursday.

Inoculated individuals, however, will apparently still be recommended to wear “a mask in crowded indoor settings like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters.”

The Associated Press report reads:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday will ease indoor mask-wearing guidance for fully vaccinated people, allowing them to safely stop wearing masks inside in most places, according to a person briefed on the announcement. The new guidance will still call for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters, but could ease restrictions for reopening workplaces and schools.

It will also no longer recommend that fully vaccinated people wear masks outdoors in crowds. The announcement comes as the CDC and the Biden administration have faced pressure to ease restrictions on fully vaccinated people — people who are two weeks past their last required COVID-19 vaccine dose — in part to highlight the benefits of getting the shot.

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 12-15, a new burst of doses is expected in the coming days.

The news comes after the CDC released a “Safer Activities” chart categorizing, according to the CDC, high-risk and low-risk activities for unvaccinated and vaccinated people:

The chart indicates inoculated Americans should wear a mask for most “less safe” or “least safe” activities, “giving them little to no edge over the unvaccinated population in terms of masking,” Breitbart News’s Hannah Bleau reports.

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