Face masks not necessary in US to curb Delta variant, CDC chief says

Vaccines mean face masks aren’t needed indoors in the United States against the Delta coronavirus variant, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

“If you are vaccinated, you are safe from the variants that are circulating here in the United States,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday on “Today.”

The CDC will leave decisions on face mask requirements up to individual states, Walensky said.

The World Health Organization suggested on Friday that fully vaccinated people still wear face masks whenever possible, citing the Delta variant’s increased transmissibility and risk of serious COVID-19 across the globe, McClatchy News reported.

“People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a virtual press conference on June 25.

But Walensky said Wednesday that the WHO must take into account nations where COVID-19 vaccination rates are very low or nonexistent.

“Fully vaccinated people do not have anything really to fear from the Delta variant,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told MSNBC. “We’re going to see cases, but we’re not going to go into a crisis.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Monday night recommended residents wear masks while in public indoor spaces, regardless of vaccination status, the Los Angeles Times reported.

First discovered in India, the Delta coronavirus variant has been identified in at least 96 countries so far.

Tests show the Moderna vaccine appears effective against the Delta coronavirus variant, the company announced Tuesday. Another study showed the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 88% effective after two doses, McClatchy News reported.

No results on the effectiveness of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine against the Delta variant have been released.

Some experts suggested the CDC should follow WHO’s lead on requiring face masks to reduce the spread of the highly contagious variant.

“The CDC needs to act quickly, without waiting, to follow the WHO guidelines and ask everyone to put the masks back on so we can stay open, protect folks, and keep the economy going,” Dr. Shad Fani Marvasti, a professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, told Yahoo Finance Live.

“We have gotten into this false sense of security thinking it’s okay to take off masks,” Marvasti said.

“The #DeltaVariant is enormously contagious with even fleeting exposure of just seconds. This indicates clearly fast airborne transmission,” Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist, health economist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., wrote of the WHO’s advice on Twitter.

“You need to keep masking, especially premium masks if possible,” Feigl-Ding wrote.

This story was originally published June 30, 2021 at 7:41 AM with the headline "Face masks not necessary in US to curb Delta variant, CDC chief says."