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On Tuesday, July 27, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that vaccinated people wear masks in indoor public spaces in communities that are seeing an increase in coronavirus cases.
Along with the new policy, the CDC recommends that K-12 children attend school in person while continuing to wear masks inside.
Why is the CDC making this transition?
The announcement follows an increase in cases of infections with the delta variant, a highly contagious covid strain that was first detected in India earlier this year. The new policy may seem like a retreat, but Rochelle Walenski, director of the CDC, explained that the agency’s decisions are not easy to make.
“Our guidelines and recommendations will follow science,” Walensky said during a press briefing. “The Delta Option every day demonstrates its willingness to outsmart us and be an opportunist in areas where we have not demonstrated a strong response against it.”
Delta was responsible for only 2% of sequencing cases in the US in May, according to Johns Hopkins, but today 82% of samples contain the more infectious variant.
Does this change affect me?
Probably (if you live in the USA). More than 63% of the US is experiencing what the CDC calls “significant transfer rates,” which means new policies will apply there. To see if you live in an area experiencing an outbreak of coronavirus, visit the CDC’s Covid data tracker, which tracks infections by county.
(If you are not fully vaccinated, this may not make much of an impact, depending on where you live. Eight states, including California, New York, and Nevada, have already required unvaccinated people to disguise themselves.)
How is the delta variant spread?
The CDC believes unvaccinated people are the cause of this spread. But occasionally, vaccinated people also get sick and can transmit the infection, although their cases are likely much less severe. Earlier, during a pandemic, a person with covid could infect an average of 2.5 people. But with the delta variant, one infection spawns an average of six more.
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