White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci echoed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent guidance update and suggested that vaccinated Americans don’t need to wear a mask outdoors.
In an interview on CBS This Morning, Fauci said that vaccinated people should start to make that transition to only wearing masks indoors and in crowds.
“If you are vaccinated, you don’t have to wear a mask outside,” he said. “It would be a very unusual situation, if you were going into a completely crowded situation where people are essentially falling all over each other, then you wear a mask. But any other time, if you’re vaccinated and you’re outside, put aside your mask. You don’t have to wear it.”
The CDC updated mask-wearing guidance last month, saying people don’t need to wear masks in small outdoor gatherings. But the agency said masks should still be worn in crowds.
The chief medical adviser said there are only very rare situations in which a vaccinated person could be in danger of contracting the virus outdoors.
It’s worth pointing out, you’re only considered “fully vaccinated” two weeks after receiving the second dose of a two-shot vaccine, or two weeks after a single-shot vaccine.
Earlier in the interview, Fauci spoke about vaccinating children. A government advisory committee recommended Pfizer’s vaccine for children 12 and older on Wednesday after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded authorization of the shots to the age group earlier in the week. The vaccine will be available for that age group as early as Thursday.
“Whenever you’re talking about requiring something, that’s always a charged issue,” Fauci said on CBS This Morning.
“I’m not so sure we should be requiring children at all. We should be encouraging them. But you got to be careful when you make a requirement of something. That usually gets you into a lot of pushback, understandable pushback.”
Last week, Fauci said that he believes the United States will be “about as close to back to normal as we can” by next year.