The CDC will recommend that some vaccinated people wear masks.


reverse a decision just made two months agoThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to recommend people get the coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday. continue to wear masks indoors under certain conditions.

Change follows rising reports breakthrough infections With the Delta variant of the virus in fully vaccinated persons. But the new guidance will mark a sharp turn from the agency’s position that most people who have been vaccinated since May do not need to wear masks indoors.

Last week, an agency spokesperson said the CDC has no plans to change its guidance unless there is a significant change in science. Federal officials met on Sunday night to review new evidence that may have triggered the comeback. CNN reported on Tuesday.

An infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City, Dr. “I think that’s great,” Celine Gounder said. “This is a move in the right direction,” he said, based on what scientists have learned about the Delta variant’s ability to cause breakthrough infections.

The CDC’s initial guidance in May said that people fully protected from the coronavirus could go indoors without a mask, but recommended that unvaccinated people still wear masks. These recommendations drew harsh criticism from some experts, who said it was premature given the large number of unvaccinated people in the country.

The CDC’s director at the time, Dr. Rochelle Walensky cited two scientific findings as important factors. Few vaccinated people get the virus, and transmission is even rarer, he noted; and vaccines appear to be effective against all known variants of the coronavirus.

A day after the announcement, the agency published the results of a large study that showed mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna were 94 percent effective in preventing symptomatic disease in those who received two doses and 82 percent in those vaccinated. one dose.

But these data and the CDC’s decision were based on infections of previous versions of the virus before the Delta variant began to spread nationwide. Reports of clusters of infections among fully immune individuals suggested that the variant may cross the vaccine barrier more frequently than previous iterations of the virus.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *