Many of Us Should Start Wearing Masks Again, According to CDC
The CDC announced today that all students and teachers in K-12 schools must wear masks, whether vaccinated or not. And people who have been vaccinated should revert to wearing masks indoors if they are in an area with “significant” or “high” community transmission.
Who needs to start wearing masks again?
Among the changes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention :
- If you are fully vaccinated, you should camouflage indoors if local transmission is significant or high.
- If you are fully vaccinated and have unvaccinated or vulnerable people in your home, you can disguise yourself regardless of the level of transmission in the community.
- Everyone in K-12 schools, including teachers, staff, students, and visitors, must wear a mask, regardless of whether they are vaccinated or not.
- Fully vaccinated people should still get tested for COVID if they know they have been exposed.
To check if transmission in your area is significant or high, use this CDC tool and find your county . (Significant means 50 new cases per 100,000 people per day, and high means 100). Much of the southeastern and western United States falls into this category; the northeast is mostly in “moderate” transmission territory. However, the number of cases may soon increase given the trajectory of the Delta, so keep checking the numbers in your area.
Why change?
The changes are due to new data on the Delta option . Vaccines are still mostly effective against Delta and continue to protect against death and hospitalization, but officials have noted breakthrough cases (less than 3% of COVID cases, according to earlier data ). Officials mentioned during a press conference today that people who are fully vaccinated and infected with the Delta variant of COVID-19 carry viral loads as high as unvaccinated people. This means they are as likely to transmit the virus to others as sick, unvaccinated people.
This did not happen with the Alpha variant, which was responsible for most of the COVID cases in the US earlier this year, nor with the original strains of the virus. CDC officials said when they made earlier recommendations that everyone, including schoolchildren, could drop masks, they expected the number of cases to decline and the rate of vaccinations to rise. Thanks to Delta, cases are on the rise again, and about 30% of Americans don’t seem interested in getting a COVID vaccine.
So we’re going to wear masks forever?
“The disguise is a temporary measure,” said CDC officials during an address to the press. “What we need to do to reduce transmission is to vaccinate people.”
Fully vaccinated people are generally protected from infection with the virus and from the onset of symptoms. If enough people in your area are vaccinated, the number of cases will decrease. And if the incidence is low and most people are vaccinated, it’s rare to find someone who can infect you.
In the meantime, masks are a useful tool for reducing transmission. Yes, it sucks that we have to wear them again when we just got used to doing without them, but this is a time frame that can be useful until more people are vaccinated – provided that enough people want to get vaccinated.
Right now, children under the age of 12 are not eligible for the vaccine, and only 30% of teens are eligible, so bringing back the requirement for school masks is a smart move. Now states, schools, municipalities and agencies must decide whether they will follow and enforce the new guidelines.