CDC Issues New Guidance For Fully Vaccinated Adults

Dev Mishra, M.D.

Founder and President, Sideline Sports Doc

Medical Director, Apeiron Life

Fellow, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons

Institute For Joint Restoration, Menlo Park, CA

March 23, 2021

Key Points:

• Recent guidance from the CDC says that fully vaccinated people can now safely gather together without masks indoors
• If someone comes in to an indoor setting who is not fully vaccinated, it’s recommended that everyone wear a mask and observe spacing precautions

On March 9, the CDC issued new guidelines for people fully vaccinated against COVID-19. “Fully vaccinated” is defined as people who have received and are at least two weeks out from both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Fully vaccinated people can now gather with each other indoors without masks or six-feet of physical distancing. They can visit unvaccinated people from a single household if everyone in that household is at low risk of developing a severe case of COVID-19.

And perhaps even better news, fully vaccinated people with no COVID symptoms no longer have to quarantine or be tested following an exposure to someone with suspected or confirmed COVID-19.

You can find the CDC’s recent guidance here.

At my place of work all of our staff have been fully vaccinated, but many of our patients have not.  From a practical standpoint this means that we have office meetings with all attendees not needing to wear a mask, but if we have someone come into the facility who has not been fully vaccinated we all put our masks on.

There are still a few key areas where we need additional research and guidance. For example, if you’ve been fully vaccinated is it still possible for you to transmit the coronavirus to someone who hasn’t been vaccinated? Another key area is to find out how long the vaccines protect an individual.

Yesterday we received news that the AstraZeneca vaccine clinical trial shows a 79% efficacy against symptomatic Covid-19 infection. This two-dose vaccine can also be transported with normal refrigeration and has a shelf life of 6 months. These points are important as it can make it easier to distribute the vaccine.

Currently we have three vaccine manufacturers (Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson) rapidly increasing production of the vaccines and soon we’ll likely have a fourth company (AstraZeneca) also distributing in the U.S. As we continue to improve the distribution and actual vaccine administration it gives us optimism that the pace of vaccinations will pick up rapidly.