5:49 p.m. ET, March 8, 2021
CDC guidance tied to vaccination rate, senior White House adviser says
From CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Biden administration Covid-19 senior adviser Andy Slavitt told CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta that the guidance on what vaccinated people can and cannot do is tied to directly to vaccination rates. Currently, about 10% of the US population is fully vaccinated.
“The rate at which new guidance will develop is directly related to how quickly we vaccinate the country. This is the key point. At 10% vaccinations we have this guidance. At 20-30%, we will have new guidance,” Slavitt told Gupta.
Slavitt also said that there was going to be a distinct shift in the messaging of what people can and cannot do – moving away from more binary messaging to one that describes activities as a range of low, medium and high risk.
The much-anticipated guidance released on Monday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that people who are fully vaccinated are able to gather indoors with others who are fully vaccinated, without a mask and distancing.
The CDC also said that people who are fully vaccinated can gather indoors with unvaccinated people from one other household without masks, if the people who are unvaccinated are at low risk for severe Covid-19.
The agency also said those who are fully vaccinated can skip quarantine and testing if exposed to someone who has Covid-19 but are asymptomatic, but they should monitor for symptoms for 14 days.
Slavitt said the Biden administration's first principal was to let the CDC drive recommendations without interference. He noted that it was not difficult for the CDC to determine the recommendations; the challenge was in communicating them so as not to confuse people.
“There are many nuances,” he said.
Slavitt said that there were learning lessons taken away from last year, with specific reference to the confusion over masks.
“We still haven’t recovered,” said Slavitt.
As a result, he said there was great emphasis placed on clear visuals, ease of understanding, and repetition in the both the recommendations as well as the messaging: explaining that the guidance is “being shared as a process” and emphasizing a handful of times throughout today’s White House briefing that the guidance was a “first step.”
The CDC defines people who are fully vaccinated as those who are two weeks past their second dose of the Moderna and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines or two weeks past a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. There is growing evidence that people who are vaccinated don't spread Covid-19, but scientists are still trying to understand how long vaccine protection lasts.