Coronavirus: US may soon ease rules for fully vaccinated people, Fauci says
- The White House chief medical adviser said that he would expect less stringent guidance to come soon
- Fauci said he would personally be ‘comfortable’ letting vaccinated households mix indoors
Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, the White House chief medical adviser said that he would expect less stringent guidance to come soon given the progress with the US vaccination programme.
This update should “relax the stringency of the recommendations”, particularly for people in the same family who have been vaccinated.
Fauci is not in charge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but has long been at the heart of the federal response to the pandemic.
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It is unclear what the timeline might be for any new rules.
The clue about forthcoming guidance came on Tuesday in Fauci’s appearance on CNN’s New Day.
Asked by host Alisyn Camerota whether fully vaccinated people should be able to get together with their family indoors, Fauci said he would personally be comfortable with that idea.
Fauci said he has had a lot of discussions about this, some of which “were not very comfortable”.
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His position, he says, is: “if I’m fully vaccinated, and my daughter comes in the house and she’s fully vaccinated, do we really need to have the stringent public health measure that we would if it was a stranger who was not vaccinated?”
He said it was “common sense” that “you don’t have to be as stringent in your public health measures” once vaccines are part of the picture.
But the CDC wants to “sit down, talk about it, look at the data and then come out with a recommendation based on the science”, Fauci said.
On Monday, Fauci said fully vaccinated people should not dine indoors or go to the theatre yet.
On the same day, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said theatres in the state would open in March. Fauci said a better strategy would be to wait until fall when more people are vaccinated.
The CDC has already started relaxing some rules for those who are fully vaccinated. On February 11, the centre said that fully vaccinated people don’t have to follow quarantine rules.
