As there are new cases hanging around the 60,000 market daily and the threat of variants spreading, it is undoubtedly difficult to navigate the pandemic, even for those who have been completely vaccinated. The director of the CDC has made it clear that these guidelines will not be the last word.
“Our understanding of the virus continues to evolve rapidly. The recommendations issued today are only a first step,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said Monday at a Covid-19 conference in the White House.
Andy Slavitt, the Biden administration’s Covid-19 senior adviser, told CNN that as more people are fully vaccinated – currently about 10% of the population – the more CDC will contribute to its advice.
“The rate at which new guidelines will develop is directly related to how fast we vaccinate the country. This is the most important point. At 10% vaccinations we have this lead. With 20-30% we will have new lead,” Slavitt said. . CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Slavitt said there will be a clear shift in the way the CDC gives advice next time. This will move away from the kind of binary messages in this first set.
The guidelines currently advise all people, fully vaccinated, to avoid medium and large crowds. However, those fully vaccinated, according to the guidelines, can now trade in for the dining room table outside the picnic table and meet each other indoors and unmasked.
The next version of the guidelines, Slavitt said, would rather describe activities as more in a low, medium or high risk category.
Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu, an infectious disease specialist at Yale, think with a sliding scale, the CDC could be a little wider next time, for example, to address more specific places like gyms and restaurants.
But for now, there are still many questions that are not answered.
More questions about travel
In a statement to CNN on Tuesday, CDC spokesman Jason McDonald said the agency would “update its travel recommendations for people who can be fully vaccinated as more people are vaccinated and we learn more about how vaccines work in the real world. look in the United States. ‘
McDonald added that “several new virus variants have spread worldwide and in the US through travel. Due to the increased risk for individuals who are fully vaccinated and are not vaccinated, everyone, regardless of vaccination status, must still take all CDC-recommended precautions, during, and after travel. ‘
Walensky of CDC explained on Monday that “every time there is a huge increase in travel, our cases in this country increase sharply. We are really trying to limit travel in this current period, and we are hopeful that we have the next guideline. more science on what vaccinated people can do. ‘
Some public health experts are also pushing back.
Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner, told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin that the latest advice is too conservative and inconsistent with other recommendations on who can vaccinate Americans. She hopes for more in the next round.
‘I really want to go further and say that people who have been fully vaccinated should be able to travel – be encouraged to travel, and that is one of the incentives we can give as a way to restore freedoms, which you can now do. travel and visit your loved ones and go to museums and cultural institutions as soon as you are completely vaccinated, ‘said Wen.
It would be helpful if the following guidelines offer a variety of risks for those who need to travel, he said.
For example, if a person’s 65-year-old mother is vaccinated but has 15 underlying conditions, Rutherford said, they might want to think twice about getting on a plane. “I mean, the effectiveness of the vaccine is average, and there’s a certain failure rate, and you might not want to take the chance,” Rutherford said.
However, if the older mother is healthy and has an adult child who is obese and has hypertension – two conditions that make someone more vulnerable to the serious consequences of Covid-19, she may want to book her ticket.
“It’s a very individualized circumstance,” Rutherford said.
Adapt to more scenarios
The guidance also did not pay attention to people who were fully vaccinated at schools. President Joe Biden announced last week that he would order countries to make vaccinating teachers a priority, and many countries have.
As more teachers are fully vaccinated, Rutherford said, for example, guidelines could address school districts that regularly test people for Covid-19. They may no longer need to examine the teachers.
Future guidelines will also want to look at university campuses that check regularly.
“Is it good enough to be vaccinated, and will they have to reduce the density in the dormitories?” Ask Rutherford. “I can imagine colleges looking at vaccination as a way to get people back on track and that they want guidance.”
Although more guidelines are coming out of the CDC, Ogbuagu reminds people that it is not just your vaccination status that you need to keep in mind while calculating the activities you can add to your life.
“Remember, the driver of this is that you have to adapt to it if you are in an area where there is a high intensity or transmission,” Ogbuagu said. “These guidelines should be appropriately variable to relax some of these measures based on the prevalence of Covid-19.”
Ogbuagu has empathy with the CDC’s guideline writers and believes they will give good advice in the next round, balancing what they know about science.
“There are some messages that I think the CDC should consider with their guidelines. Many of us think the guidelines could have gone further, but I am very sympathetic because we are on a very difficult intermediary in the pandemic,” said Ogbuagu. “It may be a little premature to make such comprehensive recommendations, but that will change as more people get these highly effective vaccines.”
Dr Sanjay Gupta and Ross Levitt of CNN contributed to this report