CDC: Everyone should mask up indoors - whether they're fully vaccinated or not - as the Delta variant sweeps the US
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Hilary Brueck
Jul 28, 2021, 04:38 IST
A school employee checks the temperature of a student on the first day of in-person classes at Baldwin Park Elementary School on August 21, 2020 in Orlando, Florida.
Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The CDC on Tuesday recommended that people wear masks indoors regardless of their vaccination status.
Masks are important in areas with high coronavirus transmission and in schools, it said.
"Some vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others," Walensky said, during a CDC press call Tuesday afternoon, saying that "new scientific data" on Delta has prompted the change.
The CDC had said in May that fully vaccinated people largely did not need to wear a mask indoors. The new guidelines are designed to help prevent vaccinated people from spreading the highly transmissible Delta variant and to protect others from getting severely ill.
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"Getting vaccinated continues to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death, even with Delta," Walensky added.
Delta spreads more easily, even among the vaccinated
This means even vaccinated people can contract and transmit the virus more easily. Their chance of landing in the hospital is still very low, though vaccinated people who have an increased risk of developing a more serious infection (older people and immunocompromised people, for example) may want to be more careful, experts say.
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"What the Delta variant will do is that it will find any gap in our defenses," Dr. Hilary Babcock, an infectious-disease expert and the medical director of infection prevention at Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's Hospitals in Missouri, recently told Insider.
"I don't think anyone is suggesting that Delta can, like, get through your mask better or get around your mask better," she added. "Masking and distancing still works for Delta. It's just that you have to be more meticulous."
According to the CDC's tally, at least 409 children under age 16 have died from COVID-19 in the US; at least 281 of them were under 12.
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"I think we fall into this flawed thinking of saying that only 400 of the 600,000 deaths from COVID-19 have been in children," Walensky said last week while testifying before a Senate committee. "Children are not supposed to die."
One of the most concerning COVID-19-related conditions that children can develop is multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, a rare malfunctioning of internal organs including the heart and lungs. MIS-C doesn't usually pop up until several weeks after a COVID-19 infection, but it can happen after both mild and severe cases. Left untreated, it can be deadly.
"We know how to actually have kids come back to the classroom and do it safely: ventilation, a reasonable amount of spacing, and strict mask use," Dr. Andrew Pavia, the chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah, recently told Insider.
His state is one of at least eight (Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Vermont) where schools are barred from implementing mask mandates.
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