Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says it’s likely as coronavirus cases go down, guidelines aimed at protecting people against the spread will be loosened.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has eased its guidelines on the wearing of masks outdoors, saying fully vaccinated Americans don’t need to cover their faces anymore unless they are in a large crowd of strangers.
Fauci told NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday as cases decrease, “you are definitely going to see the CDC come back and be more flexible.” Fauci says, “They’re going to be pulling back on some of the restrictions — guarantee it.”
The seven-day rolling average for daily new cases in the U.S. has not increased during the last two weeks, according to data through April 27 from Johns Hopkins University.
A day earlier, Fauci told NPR's Mary Louis Kelly that he has felt "for some time" that the "risk is minuscule if you are vaccinated and you are out there in the public on a path running."
"But you want to make sure that you didn't give a bad example. So right now, my own personal thing is that I will be doing what the CDC is saying one can do. If you're fully vaccinated and you're on a walk or a run or a bike, you can do that. And I'm going to be looking forward to doing that," he said.
The point, he said, is "if you are vaccinated, then the risk, as I mentioned, is extremely low."
Meantime, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday she’s “cautiously optimistic” about the coronavirus situation in the U.S., as cases appear to have “plateaued.”
But she says the virus is opportunistic, so health officials need to make sure there’s uniform vaccination across the country and there aren’t any largely non-vaccinated communities.
