US TO REVERSE ITS MASK-WEARING GUIDANCE AS THE DELTA VARIANT SPREADS

Tue 27 July 2021:

According to the New York Times, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will encourage coronavirus vaccine recipients to wear masks indoors, reversing previous guidelines that said face masks were no longer necessary.

The updated guidance would apply to areas of the US experiencing a surge of infections, including so called breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals, due to the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, the report said.

The new recommendations expected later on Tuesday would mark a sharp turnabout from the CDC’s position since May that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks in most indoor spaces, the report added.

The report followed a meeting by US health officials Sunday night to review new evidence that may have prompted the reversal.

For months COVID cases, deaths and hospitalizations were falling steadily, but those trends began to change at the beginning of the summer as a mutated and more transmissible version of the coronavirus, the delta variant, began to spread widely, especially in areas with lower vaccination rates.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the delta variant has changed the nation’s COVID-19 outlook since the the CDC relaxed masking recommendations.

“That is their job. Their job is to look at evolving information, evolving data, an evolving historic pandemic and provide guidance to the American public,” Psaki said.

“What has not changed,” she added, “is the fact that people who are vaccinated have a huge deal of protection from serious illness, from hospitalization and from death.”

The CDC’s initial guidance in May said people vaccinated against the coronavirus could go mask-free indoors, but recommended that unvaccinated people wear masks.

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