In Usa i Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated guidelines on what fully vaccinated individuals can do on Thursday: they can abandon masks and spacing both indoors and outdoors and even in large groups of people. The measures (or rather, the abandonment of the same) they do not apply to airplanes, buses, trains or other means of public transport e health facilities and in any case they must take into account any state or local restrictions and business contexts that may require greater caution. The CDC director also urged those who are immunocompromessi to speak to their doctors before giving up the masks.
On Thursday, President Biden celebrated the update as a big day for America and said fully vaccinated people canshake hands and hug again. A necessary decision?
an absolutely right decision: the CDC had the best possible attitude towards the vaccinated from the start, comments al Courier service Antonella Viola, immunologist, professor of Pathology at the University of Padua.
In the US they are already vaccinating the boys, they did it also to convince the bag of undecided people. a good boost?
the road to scientific evidence, because vaccines also block contagion. If you are to instill trust in vaccines, you need to give the vaccinated more freedom. In Italy it seems that there is no confidence in vaccines: the data are very clear on the reduction of contagion – he says Viola -: the latest studies carried out in Italy and in the United Kingdom say that with respect to transmission there are no major differences between the approved vaccines.
In the US, the inhabitants vaccinated with two doses are 117 million, equal to about 35% of the population, in Italy we are 13.6%: would these decisions be applicable to us too?
As far as we are concerned, it seems premature – explains al Corriere Stefania Salmaso, former director of the National Epidemiology Center of the National Institute of Health (ISS) – because in Italy, for example, the amount of people vaccinated is not well distributed in the general population. There are still quite a few people who are not immunized, even among the vulnerable ones. In my opinion, the mask still has to be maintained, then there will be contexts in which it can certainly be abandoned (contexts in which there are no vulnerable people or individuals are all vaccinated), but the recommendation in general seems to me not to be fully applicable in Italy.
If you are vaccinated and stay indoors with other vaccinated people or people who are not at risk, you can stay without a mask and without distancing. Outdoors we could also take it off for everyone – he declares Antonella Viola -, because it is difficult to carry out the checks. If there are no crowds and you can walk at a distance from others, it makes no sense to have a mask. You have to use it in the streets of the center full of people or when you get close to others.
How to remove it in the places you close without checking?
I’m not talking so much about restaurants or public places, but about offices – he explains Viola -: for example, in our offices at the university we are all vaccinated, what is the point of continuing to keep the mask ?.
What measures could we remove here in Italy?
We should have long ago removed the swab and quarantine obligation for vaccinated people, as happens in the US. Among other things, in a low-prevalence context (as the Italian one is becoming), with rapid tests the risk is that there are a certain number of false positives, explains the immunologist Rapea.
Testing seems important in conditions of maximum risk: in the event that a vaccinee has to see a very fragile and vulnerable person – specifies the epidemiologist SalmasO -. Quarantine after exposure to risk in the case of vaccinated, however, a measure that could be relaxed.
Should the easing of measures be linked to the percentage of vaccinated people in general?
In Italy we are proceeding with vaccination by age group and we have entire population groups that are not vaccinated at all in which the infection continues to circulate – he declares Salmaso -. We could indicate a certain threshold of vaccination coverage as long as it is in all generational brackets. We know very well that those who associate with adolescents and children are faced with non-immunized people.
From my point of view the vaccinated could already do without, when they are among them, to wear a mask – he clarifies Viola -. We can tie the decision to a threshold, but that’s not the point. The point is that the vaccine protects (and also very well), so we can safely pass the message that vaccinated people can not use the mask, unless in particular contexts.
feasible, alternatively, to indicate an incidence threshold as an objective for the abandonment of this type of precaution?
We currently have a weekly incidence of 103 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 128 a week ago, with Regions more or less close to this number, so the risk of contagion is there – he adds. Salmaso -. Even in the vaccinated there remains a residual risk of infection, therefore, until the incidence drops to much lower levels and vaccinations rise to much higher levels, take precautions, especially when dealing with vulnerable individuals, to keep. We will begin to have better pandemic control capacity when we drop to less than 50 cases per 100,000, which is almost half the current incidence.