- New guidance from the CDC is coming for vaccinated people, said Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday.
- He told CNN that he thought the agency would soon “relax the rigor of the recommendations”.
- Fauci, who does not run the CDC, said he would be “comfortable” with letting vaccinated families mix.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for those who have been vaccinated is to be expected “soon”.
The White House’s chief medical advisor said on Tuesday that he expects less rigorous guidance soon, due to progress with the US vaccination program.
This update should “relax the rigor of the recommendations”, especially for people in the same family who were vaccinated.
Fauci is not in charge of the CDC, but has long been at the center of the federal response to the pandemic.
It is not clear what the timetable for any new rules might be.
The clue about future guidance came on Tuesday, with Fauci’s participation on CNN’s “New Day”.
Asked by hostess Alisyn Camerota whether fully vaccinated people should be able to reunite with their families at home, Fauci said she would personally feel comfortable with that idea.
Fauci had many discussions about this, some of which “were not very comfortable,” he said.
He said his position was: “If I am fully vaccinated and my daughter comes home and she is fully vaccinated, do we really need the strict public health measures that we would have if we were a stranger who was not vaccinated?”
Fauci said it is “common sense” that “you don’t have to be so strict in your public health measures”, since vaccines are part of the picture.
But the CDC wants to “sit down, talk about it, look at the data and then come up with a science-based recommendation,” said Fauci, according to CNN.
On Monday, Fauci said that people who are fully vaccinated should not dine indoors or go to the theater yet.
On the same day, Governor Andy Cuomo of New York said the state’s cinemas would open in March. Fauci said a better strategy would be to wait until autumn, when more people are vaccinated.
The CDC has already started to relax some rules for people who are fully vaccinated. On February 11, the agency said that people who were fully vaccinated did not need to follow quarantine rules.