US CDC says fully vaccinated people can walk outdoors without a mask

U.S. health officials have indicated that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a mask outsideunless they are in a crowd

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday released the updated guidelines in another carefully calibrated step on the road to getting back to normal after the coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 570,000 people in the United States.

For most of the past year, the CDC had advised Americans to wear face masks outside if they were within six feet of each other.

Change occurs when more than half of American adults have been vaccinated against the coronavirus at least once, and more than a third have been completely vaccinated.

The CDC guide says that, vaccinated or not, people do not have to wear masks outside when walking, cycling or running alone or with members of their household. They can also do without masks at small outdoor gatherings with fully vaccinated people..

But from there, the CDC has different guidelines for people who are fully vaccinated and those who are not.

Unvaccinated people -defined by the CDC as those who have not yet received the two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or the single-dose formula from Johnson & Johnson- should wear masks at outdoor gatherings that include other unvaccinated people. They should also continue to use face masks in outdoor restaurants. Fully immunized people don’t need to cover up in these situations, according to the CDC.

However, everyone should continue to wear masks at crowded outdoor events, such as concerts or sporting eventssay the CDC.

The agency continues to recommend the use of masks in closed public places, such as hair salons, restaurants, shopping malls, museums and cinemas.

“It’s the return of freedom,” said Dr. Mike Saag, an infectious disease expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who celebrated the change. “It’s the return of being able to resume normal activities. We are not there yet, but we are on the exit ramp. And it is something beautiful ”.

More people need to be vaccinated and concerns remain about variants and other possible changes in the epidemic. But Saag said the new guidelines were a reasonable gain after the development and distribution of effective vaccines, and some 140 million Americans have stepped up to get vaccinated.

The CDC, which has been cautious in its guidance during the crisis, has essentially backed what many Americans have already done in recent weeks.

Dr. Babak Javid, medical scientist at the University of California at San Francisco, said that The new directions of the CDC are sound. “In the vast majority of outdoor environments, the risk of transmission is low,” Javid said.

Javid has been in favor of the outdoor mask requirements because he believes they increase the use of indoor masks, but said Americans can understand the relative risks and make good decisions.

“The main thing is to make sure that people wear masks indoors “when they are in public spaces, He said. And he added: “I look forward to an existence without masks.”

“The time is right because we now have a lot of data on the parameters in which transmission occurs,” said Mercedes Carnethon, professor and vice president of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Also, he said, “the extra freedoms can serve as a motivation” for people to get vaccinated.

(With AP information)

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