CDC Reverses Some Mask Recommendations, Asks Everyone to Wear Masks in Schools

(KNSI) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that kids wear masks when they return to school and even vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in parts of the U.S.

New information about the delta variant’s ability to spread among vaccinated people prompted the change from the CDC on Tuesday.

The CDC says vaccinated people have the potential to spread that virus to others.

Masks are recomonded for all teachers, staff, students and visitors to schools, regardless of vaccination status.

The new guidance follows recent decisions in Los Angeles and St. Louis to revert to indoor mask mandates amid a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations that have been especially bad in the South.

The country is averaging more than 57,000 cases a day and 24,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Most new infections in the U.S. continue to be among unvaccinated people.

But “breakthrough” infections, which generally cause milder illness, can occur in vaccinated people.

For much of the pandemic, the CDC advised Americans to wear masks outdoors if they were within 6 feet of one another.

In April, as vaccination rates rose sharply, the agency eased its guidelines on the wearing of masks outdoors, saying that fully vaccinated Americans no longer needed to cover their faces unless they were in a big crowd of strangers.

In May, the guidance was eased further for fully vaccinated people, allowing them to stop wearing masks outdoors in crowds and in most indoor settings.

Subsequent CDC guidance said fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks at summer camps or at schools.

For months COVID cases, deaths and hospitalizations were falling steadily, but those trends began to change at the beginning of the summer as the delta variant, a mutated and more transmissible version of the virus, began to spread widely, especially in areas with lower vaccination rates.

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