CDC director said vaccinated people are ‘safe’ and do not need to wear masks. 

Reassuring words from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, who said Wednesday that fully vaccinated people are “safe” from the current variants and do not need to wear masks, doubling down on CDC guidance as some others call for a return to mask wearing.

Some experts have differing advice: The question of mask wearing has come back to the forefront given recommendations from Los Angeles County health officials, and from the World Health Organization, that even fully vaccinated people should continue to wear masks indoors in public as a precaution due to the rise of the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus.

But Walensky said that the CDC’s guidance has not changed and that fully vaccinated people do not need to wear masks, echoing other health experts who note that the vaccines are highly effective even against the delta variant.

“If you are vaccinated, you are safe from the variants that are circulating here in the United States,” Walensky said on NBC’s “Today,” adding it was “exactly right” that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks.

She responded to the WHO by saying they are dealing with a worldwide situation where far fewer people are vaccinated than in the United States, given global vaccine disparities, and are therefore issuing more cautious advice.

“We know that the WHO has to make guidelines and provide information to the world,” she said. “Right now, we know as we look across the globe that less than 15 percent of people around the world have been vaccinated and many people of those have really only received one dose of a two-dose vaccine. There are places around the world that are surging.”

Her words sparked some pushback:

Wearing masks indoors primarily protects those who are not vaccinated from potential exposure to COVID and potentially more serious illness if exposed. Centering recommendatjons around the needs of those made most vulnerable, not those with the most protection, is called EQUITY.

— Rhea Boyd MD, MPH (@RheaBoydMD) June 30, 2021

And more:

Instead of leveling with the American people and trying to help educate them on risk reduction, you doubled down on your misleading, ablest “masked or vaxxed” messaging. As a mother, a clinician, & a scientist, I’m really disappointed in you @CDCDirector.https://t.co/cWCSH0Rwey

— Erin C. Sanders, MSN, WHNP-BC (She/Her/Hers) (@ErinSandersNP) June 30, 2021