CDC gives new guidance for those fully vaccinated

People who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can meet without masks indoors in small groups with others who have been inoculated but should avoid non-essential travel and continue to wear face-coverings in public, the Biden administration said on Monday.

Lisa Bernhard produced this report.

New guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Monday for those who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, giving them some leeway to resume more “normal” activity even while the coronavirus is still widely circulating.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said individuals fully inoculated against COVID-19 can meet in small groups with other vaccinated people, in private settings such as homes, without wearing masks.

“So what does this mean?

If you and a friend or you and a family member are both vaccinated, you can have dinner together.

You can visit your grandparents, if they have been vaccinated and you have been too.” She defined “fully vaccinated” as those who are two weeks past their second Pfizer or Moderna shot or Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine.

Walensky also said fully vaccinated people can visit a single household of unvaccinated people without wearing masks if those not vaccinated are considered low-risk.

Those fully vaccinated, however, should still wear masks when visiting unvaccinated people from multiple households.

And they should continue with other precautions, such as avoiding medium- and large-sized in-person gatherings.

"I think l important to realize as we're working through this that still over 90 percent of the population is not yet vaccinated, and that is our responsibility to make sure, in the context of 60,000 new cases a day, that we protect those who remain unvaccinated and remain vulnerable.” The recommendations come as about 30 million people, or 9.2% of the U.S. population, have been fully vaccinated.

Millions more have had their first shot.

As vaccinations accelerate to a record 2.2 million shots per day, cases and death continued to decline last week.

Despite the positive trends, health officials have warned that the country could see a resurgence in cases as more infectious variants of the virus have been found in nearly every state.

Over 525,000 people in the U.S. have died of the virus - or one in every 621 residents.