CDC Announces New Outdoor Mask Guidelines, Colorado Vaccination Rates Dip
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines Tuesday on wearing masks outdoors, saying fully vaccinated Americans do not need to cover their faces anymore unless they are among many strangers in a large crowd. Those who are unvaccinated are also permitted to go outside without masks in certain situations, per the new CDC guidelines.
Most of the past year since the pandemic began, the CDC advised Americans to wear masks outdoors if they are within six feet of one another.
“Today, I hope, is a day when we can take another step back to the normalcy of before,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday. “Over the past year, we have spent a lot of time telling Americans what you can’t do. Today, I am going to tell you some of the things you can do, if you are fully vaccinated.”
Walensky also says the decision was made due to rising vaccination numbers; declines in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths; and research showing less than 10 percent of documented instances of transmission of the virus happened outdoors.
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Many also characterized the announcement as a motivator for more people to seek vaccinations.
“The bottom line is clear: If you’re vaccinated, you can do more things, more safely, both outdoors as well as indoors,” President Biden said. “So for those who haven’t gotten their vaccinations yet, especially if you’re younger or thinking you don’t need it, this is another great reason to go get vaccinated now.”
AP reports that more than half of U.S. adults, about 140 million people, have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and more than a third are fully vaccinated.
However, in Colorado, trends have started to shift in a new direction. The Denver Channel reported the same day of the CDC’s announcement that Colorado is beginning to see declining interest in getting the COVID-19 vaccine for the first time since the end of March. Data from the state’s vaccine dashboard showed a 15 percent decrease in vaccinations as of Tuesday afternoon compared to the week before.
Governor Polis said Tuesday that it was a “hesitancy or laziness issue,” expanding that there is also a misconception on the current accessibility of vaccination appointments.
“There’s people who still think they have to spend an hour reloading web pages, and it’s hard to set up appointments. Guess what? It isn’t. It’s easy to set up an appointment, and you don’t even need an appointment. You can just show up and get it,” he said.
Health officials predicted a decline following an initial ramp-up, with the folks who were most interested in the vaccine already making their appointments early on.
“The people that really wanted it have gotten it,” Polis said. “Now, it’s making sure that the people who in some abstract way think they’ll someday get it instead concretely make a plan to get it this week or next week. And that’s going to be the challenge of the next few weeks.”
This week also shows Colorado’s COVID cases increasing at a slower pace than previous weeks, Polis expressed concern over the hospitalization rates passing 600 COVID patients for the first time in months and a spike in cases among children between 11 and 17 years old.
Polis indicated that the biggest factor here was vaccinated parents resuming social activities with their unvaccinated children and the vaccination rates in those areas. Specifically, Dr. Rachel Herlihy, state epidemiologist for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment showed that the current COVID case rates are significantly higher in counties with low vaccination rates.
Pueblo County has roughly 40 to 45 percent of residents vaccinated and is averaging more than 300 cases per 100,000 people over the past seven days. Nearly 60 percent of Denver County residents are vaccinated and has less than 150 cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days.
According to CDPHE Chief Medical Officer Dr. Eric France, more than half of eligible Coloradans have received at least one vaccine dose, and 37 percent are considered fully immune as of Tuesday.
“I think it’s a disappointment to see cases going up and hospitalizations going up knowing that this is happening among the unvaccinated,” France says, “at a time when we have the supply and we have a very effective vaccine at our fingers.”
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