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Eleven weeks ago, with more than a million Americans a day getting vaccinated and the number of COVID-19 cases low, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that most people fully vaccinated no longer needed to wear masks indoors, even in crowded spaces.
Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, called it “one of the greatest missed opportunities we’ve had.”
The hope was to get people to get vaccinated, but the new directive lacked rules to penalize them if they didn’t.
“There was no enforcement provision. Where I live, everyone has just stopped wearing masks and social distancing, ”Salmon said. “They didn’t follow the CDC’s recommendations, they just thought, ‘Oh, I don’t need to wear a mask anymore.’ “
In May, it looked like the pandemic had been pushed back. But over the past two weeks, COVID-19 cases have increased 171%. The death rate is up 19% from the previous week. Revolutionary infections are in the news, hitting sports teams and politicians.
At the same time, vaccination has slowed down. About 516,000 people a day are vaccinated, down 85% from the peak in April. And while there are signs that the latest wave of infections among the unvaccinated may cause some to roll up their sleeves, just over 56% of people in the United States have received at least one injection of COVID-19. .
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Yet the message from the federal government has not changed: get vaccinated. If you are not vaccinated, wear a mask.
More and more, this message seems insufficient. With CDC guidelines unchanged, local governments and individuals are taking their own steps to protect themselves and others.
Los Angeles County and other municipalities require everyone to wear masks indoors. Saint-Louis announced that starting Monday, all people 5 years and older must wear masks indoors, vaccinated or not. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends universal masking in schools.
In San Francisco, which already plans to require all city employees to be vaccinated, the city and businesses are discussing whether to require proof of vaccination to enter bars. Some gyms already require it.
“Things are moving so fast with Delta,” said Jeff Cretan, communications director for the Mayor of San Francisco, London Breed. “What seems impossible today might seem inevitable a week from now. We just don’t know it yet.”
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Needing ID and a vaccination card to hit a bar could be the push young people need to get vaccinated while protecting the people who work there. This is the kind of calculation that nightlife establishments in San Francisco are considering.
It has worked in other countries. Last week, more than 1.7 million people in France made an appointment for a vaccine after the president announced that proof of vaccination would be required to enter restaurants, cinemas and theaters as well as to board long-haul trains and planes.
Another option could be to link the masking to local levels of hospitalization for COVID-19, said Dr Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.
“Israel called this a ‘soft suppression’ strategy to help curb transmission without more extensive restrictions during the delta variant period,” she said.
Such an approach would standardize mask wearing, give local governments a clear goal line, and allow businesses to follow a government guideline rather than just setting their own rules, which could provide some coverage for unruly customers.
“This aligns with CDC guidelines, which make it clear that local regions should have the discretion to reinstate mask guidelines for the vaccinated,” Gandhi said.
Do fully vaccinated people need to wear masks?
When reporters on Thursday asked reporters whether the agency would recommend masking for those vaccinated in light of the current increase in cases, Director Rochelle Walensky said it was optional.
“If you are vaccinated you get exceptional levels of protection against this vaccine. You can choose to add an extra layer of protection by putting on your mask,” she said. “It’s a very individual choice that’s consistent with our CDC guidelines since we released it.”
Talk to health experts, however, and almost all of them choose to mask themselves – and they recommend others who have been vaccinated to do so, too.
“I never stopped, personally, even when they raised things in June,” said Dr. Otto Yang, professor of medicine and chief of infectious diseases at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
“Masking remains one of the important tools at our disposal. It is a very minor inconvenience for a potentially significant advantage.”
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“I’m Mr. Conservative, that’s what my wife tells me,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor and infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. “When I go to the grocery store, I wear a mask. I know it’s silly, but beyond that, it’s okay. It’s part of my life.”
Although fully vaccinated people are well protected against serious illness or death from COVID-19, a small percentage of them can still contract a mild case, sometimes so mild that they don’t even know they have it. have.
That’s another reason to wear a mask, said Dr Alpesh Patel, chief epidemiologist for the Will County Department of Health in Illinois. His elderly father lives with him.
“Although my family is fully vaccinated, when we go out to public places and shops, we wear masks,” he said.
They wear masks to make sure they don’t bring the coronavirus home. It might not hurt the young members of his family, but it could hurt his father.
Priya Duggal is an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies children with post-COVID-19 illnesses. Since children under 12 cannot yet be vaccinated, she is surprised at the resistance of some to children wearing a mask.
“The number is small, but some children have long-term symptoms. And we cannot predict who these children will be,” Duggal said. “As a mother, I know most parents would do anything to protect their children. It’s a relatively small request for something that could potentially save lives.”
Contact Elizabeth Weise at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Amid outbreaks of COVID cases, should vaccinees wear a mask?
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