CNN
- New guidance from the CDC is coming for vaccinated people, Dr Anthony Facui said Tuesday.
- Speaking to CNN he said he thinks the agency will soon “relax the stringency of the recommendations.”
- Fauci — who doesn’t run the CDC — said he would personally be “comfortable” letting vaccinated households mix indoors.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that new guidance from the CDC for those who have been vaccinated should be expected “pretty soon”.
Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, the White House chief medical advisor said that he would expect less stringent guidance to come soon given the progress with the US vaccination program.
This update should “relax the stringency of the recommendations”, particularly for people in the same family who have been vaccinated.
Fauci is not in charge of CDC, properly called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but has long been at the heart of the federal response to the pandemic.
It is unclear what the timeline might be for any new rules.
The clue about forthcoming guidance came on Tuesday in Fauci's appearance on CNN's "New Day."
Asked by host Alisyn Camerota whether fully vaccinated people should be able to get together with their family indoors, Fauci said he would personally be comfortable with that idea.
Fauci said he has had a lot of discussions about this, some of which "were not very comfortable".
His position, he says, is: "if I'm fully vaccinated, and my daughter comes in the house and she's fully vaccinated, do we really need to have the stringent public health measure that we would if it was a stranger who was not vaccinated?"
He said it was "common sense" that "you don't have to be as stringent in your public health measures" once vaccines are part of the picture.
But the CDC wants to "sit down, talk about it, look at the data and then come out with a recommendation based on the science", CNN reported Fauci said.
On Monday, Fauci said fully vaccinated people should not dine indoors or go to the theater yet.
On the same day, New York Gov. Andy Cuomo said theaters in the state would open in March. Fauci said a better strategy would be to wait until Fall when more people are vaccinated.
The CDC has already started relaxing some rules for those who are fully vaccinated. On February 11, the center said that fully vaccinated people don't have to follow quarantine rules.