As Covid-19 cases in the United States continue to decline, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says fully vaccinated people need not wear a mask indoors anymore.
FREEDOM finally comes for Americans vaccinated against Covid-19 as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lifts its indoor mask mandate for vaccinated people.
"If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic," the CDC reassuringly said, even as the United States has reached 59 percent vaccination of its adult population with first dose.
CDC announced the lifting of mask-wearing mandate for anyone who is fully vaccinated and they can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small without mask or physical distancing.
CDC Director Rochelle Walesnky said the move, which comes more than a year after the federal government recommended people cover their faces in public, follows accumulating data showing the extremely high efficacy of vaccines, not just to prevent symptomatic Covid-19 but also infection.
It sparked joyful reactions in some, while others were cautious and said they would keep their masks on in public out of caution, despite being fully vaccinated.
In the rare case that someone who is fully vaccinated becomes infected, research has shown they are unlikely to have a high viral load in their nose and therefore to transmit the disease onward.
However, masks may still be required on planes, buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation traveling into, within, or out of the United States, and in U.S. transportation hubs such as airports and stations.
Fully vaccinated international travelers arriving in the United States still need to get tested within three days of their flight or show documentation of recovery from Covid-19 in the past three months.
The move comes as Covid-19 cases are declining quickly while vaccinations continue to rise slowly but surely in the United States, the former epicenter of the pandemic.
Around 59 percent of adults have received at least one dose, while the country is reporting around 38,000 daily new cases – a per capita rate of 11 new cases per 100,000 people, well below global hotspots and falling fast.
Public health authorities were cautious about vaccines' ability to stop transmission back when they were first rolled out in December, because the clinical trials they went through were only designed to test their efficacy against symptomatic disease.
Now, however, studies like a paper from Israel have shown there was a 94 percent reduction in asymptomatic infection.
Because the outbreak itself is declining, the actual rate of so-called "breakthrough infections" is low.
"For somebody who's already been fully vaccinated, they can wear the mask out of solidarity or in a symbolic sense, but their wearing a mask indoors is not benefiting anyone else," explained Vinay Prasad, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
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