TheCable

Americans who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can now resume activities that they did prior to the pandemic, without wearing a face mask.

According to the latest recommendation by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday, fully vaccinated persons may also not observe physical distancing, “except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance”.

They will not need to get tested before or after travel within the US, nor will they need to undergo self-quarantine after travel.

They also don’t need to get tested before leaving the United States, unless their destination country requires the COVID test.

The CDC considers individuals as fully vaccinated two weeks after the one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot, or two weeks after the second dose of either Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.

This new recommendation by the agency, however, comes with caveats.

The agency said fully vaccinated individuals must still wear a mask and physically distance when going to hospitals, when traveling by public transportation, or while in transportation hubs like airports and bus stations, as well as within prison settings.

The CDC justified its recommendation by citing several recent studies showing that vaccines are more than 90 percent effective at preventing mild and severe disease, hospitalisations and deaths from COVID-19 in real world settings.

It also emphasised that vaccines in use have been effective against new variants of the virus circulating in the US.

In an interview, Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said the recommendation is in the right direction.

“We’ve got to liberalise the restrictions so people can feel like they’re getting back to some normalcy. Pulling back restrictions on indoor masks is an important step in the right direction,” he said.

“You can’t inhibit people from doing the things they want to do, which is one of the reasons they wanted to get vaccinated in the first place, because other people are not getting vaccinated.”

As of May 12, about 154 million Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, while around 117 million people have been fully vaccinated.