Recent CDC guidance has changed for fully vaccinated individuals. Hopefully this will help you decipher exactly what that means for you depending on where you live or work. As we have already talked about, RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SURVIVING IN COVID CONDITIONS WILL CHANGE AS NEW INFORMATION IS LEARNED AND AS VARIANTS CONTINUE TO SPREAD.
On July 27, the CDC released new masking recommendations for fully vaccinated, “to maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading it to others, wear a mask indoors in public if you are in an area of substantial or high transmission.” Determining if you live in an area of substantial or high transmission is found on a website provided by the CDC at CDC COVID Data Tracker. The maps and charts on this site are current and will be updated daily at 8pm ET.
By clicking on your State and then your County, you will find where your County level of community transmission is currently, this will help to guide how you need to protect yourself and others.
Drilling down on the County page will also provide you with the percentage of County that is vaccinated, and case counts both current and historical. Please remember to check Counties that you frequent as the recommendations will change. Although I live in Knox County, TN and it is listed as “substantial risk,” the adjacent County I frequently visit is “high risk.”
We are still learning how long the COVID-19 vaccines can protect people. Discussions are ongoing about vaccine boosters. There has not been a decision made regarding these yet and hopefully this will be coming soon. The CDC has made recommendations for immunocompromised stating, “Wearing a mask is most important if you have a weakened immune system, or if, because of your age, or an underlying medical condition, you are at increased risk for severe disease, or if someone in your household has a weakened immune system, is at increased risk for severe disease, or is unvaccinated. If this applies to you or your household, you might choose to wear a mask regardless of the level of transmission in your area.”
Seems this virus is not just going to go away, if we continue to have a certain percentage of the population that is not vaccinated, they will continue to be the host for the virus to mutate. There does not appear there is a way for science to stay ahead of the mutation, since we cannot create a vaccine for a virus that has not yet appeared. Herd immunity, or the point at which enough people in a population have developed antibodies to a disease, is estimated to kick in at about 65 percent to 70 percent with COVID-19. My County currently sits at 45.9%. We have a long way to go.
What We Know
- COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective at preventing COVID-19, including severe illness and death.
- COVID-19 vaccines are effective against severe disease and death from variants of the virus that cause COVID-19 currently circulating in the United States, including the Delta variant.
- Infections happen in only a small proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, even with the Delta variant. When these infections occur among vaccinated people, they tend to be mild.
- If you are fully vaccinated and become infected with the Delta variant, you can spread the virus to others.
- People with weakened immune systems, including people who take immunosuppressive medications, may not be protected even if fully vaccinated.
- THE VACCINE IS CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE FOR CHIDREN UNDER AGE 12
Resources:
When You’ve Been Fully Vaccinated | CDC
#getvaccinated