CDC says fully vaccinated Americans can go without masks outdoors, except in crowded settings

For that reason, the guidance also says even unvaccinated individuals may go without masks when walking, jogging or biking outdoors with household members. However, officials caution that crowded outdoor settings still pose risks and urge everyone — both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals — to wear masks when attending sporting events, live performances and parades.

The recommendations come as more than 52 percent of eligible people in the United States have gotten at least one shot, but vaccine supply has begun to outstrip demand. The guidance is aimed at helping the fully inoculated ease back into daily routines upended by the pandemic while encouraging others to get their shots to counter highly contagious new variants. States and localities across the country are opening walk-in clinics to make it easier for people to get vaccines.

“Over the past year, we have spent a lot of time telling Americans what they cannot do, what they should not do,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a White House briefing. “Today, I’m going to tell you some of the things you can do if you are fully vaccinated.”

A growing body of evidence suggests that fully vaccinated people are less likely to have asymptomatic infections or transmit the coronavirus to others. Officials don’t know how long protection lasts and how much the vaccines protect against emerging virus variants.

But “taking steps toward relaxing certain measures for vaccinated people may help improve coronavirus vaccine acceptance and uptake,” the guidance states. “Therefore, there are several activities that fully vaccinated people can resume now, at low risk to themselves, while being mindful of the potential risk of transmitting the disease to others.”

Last month, the CDC told pandemic-weary Americans who were fully vaccinated they could gather indoors with other fully vaccinated people without wearing masks, and could visit indoors with unvaccinated people under certain conditions.

The guidance released Tuesday includes a color-coded chart that shows activities that fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people can do indoors and outdoors, and which ones can be done without masks. The safest activities, highlighted in green, are outdoors in small gatherings. Activities with the greatest risk are indoor settings that involve behaviors such as singing, shouting, heavy breathing, inability to wear a mask or inability to maintain physical distancing, such as indoor high-intensity exercise class.

The nearly 96 million Americans who are fully vaccinated can now forgo masks for many outdoor activities, including:

° Walking, running, hiking or biking outdoors alone or with members of your household.

º Attending a small outdoor gathering with fully vaccinated family and friends.

º Attending a small outdoor gathering with a mix of fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

º Dining at an outdoor restaurant with friends from multiple households.

Officials say certain conditions increase risk: crowding, time spent, lack of ventilation and high community transmission. That’s why the CDC is recommending that it is safest for fully vaccinated people to continue to wear well-fitted masks in these settings, including:

“The examples today show that when you are fully vaccinated, you can return to many activities safely … and begin to get back to normal,” Walensky said. “And the more people who are vaccinated, the more steps we can take towards spending time with people we love, doing the things we love to enjoy. I hope this message is encouraging for you. It shows just how powerful these vaccines are.”

Monica Gandhi, an infectious-diseases expert at the University of California at San Francisco, applauded the CDC’s action after arguing that accumulating evidence shows the low risk of outdoor transmission.

“Viral particles disperse effectively in the outside air,” she said in an email, citing numerous studies, including one in Wuhan, China, that found just one of 7,324 infection events investigated was linked to outdoor transmission.

Gandhi noted that the World Health Organization says masks are not necessary outside unless physical distancing, which the agency defines as about three feet, cannot be maintained.

She and others have said it’s important for public health officials to provide incentives as “a great strategy to encourage those who are on the fence to get vaccinated.”

“Public health messaging since the time of HIV that focuses on positive, rather than negative, reinforcement has been shown to be more effective, so the CDC guidelines that vaccinated people don’t have to mask outdoors will hopefully help persuade some of the vaccine hesitant in the U.S. to get the vaccine,” Gandhi said.

The CDC guidance said there is limited data on vaccine protection in people who are immunocompromised. It urges people taking immunosuppressive medications to discuss the need for personal protective measures with their health-care providers, even if they are fully vaccinated.

Even before the CDC’s announcement, some states were already moving to ease mask mandates: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) on Monday cleared groups of fewer than 1,000 to gather outside without masks. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) on Tuesday said his state’s rule requiring masks outdoors would expire Friday, except in certain situations where social distancing is impossible.

The issue has become even more politically charged recently as conservative media figures have used their platforms online and on cable news to turn outdoor masking rules into a cause celebre. Fox News host Tucker Carlson urged viewers this week to contact child protective services to report the parents of children seen masked outdoors.

“Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart,” he said on his show, which is among the most watched on cable, regularly drawing 3 million viewers. “Call the police immediately, contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives.”

His instructions were echoed Tuesday morning by Molly Hemingway, a senior editor at the Federalist, a conservative Web magazine. She tweeted: “Even if you’re an outdoor mask enthusiast at this late date, despite the complete lack of scientific support for same, I think we all can agree that masking children outdoors, at the very least, is abusive, right?”

The comments illustrate how face coverings, which were scorned by President Donald Trump, remain a marker of political identity more than a year into the pandemic.

Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed to this report.