A former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official on Tuesday hailed its new guidelines for fully COVID-19 vaccinated Americans that would allow them to gather maskless in small groups, saying it put the nation “on the road out of this pandemic.”
In an interview on NBC News’ “Today” show, Dr. Richard Besser, the former acting director of the CDC, also predicted travel guidelines will also likely be revised.
“I’m excited about these guidelines,” Besser said of the guidelines’ change announced Monday. “I think it gives us a cautious step forward and an emotional release, in the sense that we really, truly are on the road out of this pandemic.”
For the elderly in particular, Besser said, “getting those two doses of vaccine, being fully vaccinated, now knowing they can get together with other people, that’s a huge, huge emotional release and lift.”
Besser added that he expects “it’s not going to be long” before the CDC revises travel guidelines as well for “other indoor spaces” if people are fully vaccinated, but remains worried about states ditching mask-wearing guidelines too early.
“[S]till across the nation, the percentage of people who are fully vaccinated is very low,” he said. “We’re seeing a lot of states remove restrictions that really need to stay in place. The idea that states are telling people that they don’t need to wear a mask, that there’s no mandate for wearing masks, at a time when the situation is still very tenuous, that’s very concerning.”
According to Besser, that message from those states is “competing guidance to guidance that’s based on public health science.”
Besser also said he was optimistic about getting an answer on whether a vaccinated person can transmit the virus to someone else, citing a science review by the CDC that showed vaccination “reduces the amount of virus in your nose, reduces the ability to transmit.” He added world studies also show “some of these vaccines reduce the ability to cause asymptomatic infection or any infection at all.”
“One of the outstanding questions, though, has to do with some of these variants that are out there, and whether the vaccines will be as effective for that,” he said. “I expect that that’s probably what’s holding CDC back from guidance and changes here that are less cautious than what we heard yesterday.”
The CDC’s most recent guidance comes just three weeks after it declared that there’s strong evidence that in-person schooling can be done safely, especially at lower grade levels. The agency emphasized that for classrooms from kindergarten to 12th grade, there should be meticulous hand washing, disinfection of school facilities, diagnostic testing, and contact tracing to find new infections and separate infected people from others in a school.
Source: Newmax
