Why you should keep wearing masks even when fully vaccinated: All you need to know

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on May 13, issued an advisory that ‘fully vaccinated’ people in the US need not wear masks anymore.

The CDC stated that the new guidance is based on strong evidence from medical studies that showed very few cases of COVID-19 infection and transmission of the disease were registered after taking the vaccine.

However, the health experts around the world were not convinced about dropping the masks completely.

Why you should keep wearing masks even when fully vaccinated: Key points

•The CDC guidance has been issued keeping the American population in mind. Approximately one-third or more than 120 million people have been vaccinated in the US. There has been a steady decline in the number of COVID cases in the US.

•Health experts have noted that the US is using double mutant’, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which have a higher efficacy against the COVID infection. The studies have shown that the mRNA vaccines fair better against the variants as well.

However, the COVID situation in India is different with the second wave of the pandemic at its peak.

•Health experts warned that dropping the masks in India is not all advisable and can have disastrous consequences. Even when fully vaccinated, the probability of getting infected with COVID-19 may be low but there is still a small chance of infection and transmission are still present and that could be very risky.

•Only a small fraction of India has been vaccinated, many are waiting to get their shot, and many are forgoing the vaccination due to the fear of the infection or inadequate trust in the healthcare system.

•Regarding the vaccines, the health experts noted that though both COVAXIN and COVISHIELD have been found effective to neutralize the B.1.617 or the Indian ‘double mutant’ variant, there are still ongoing studies to study the effectiveness of vaccines, how long the vaccines can stave off the infection and if the vaccines offer protection from future variants.

•Health experts expressed that studies have shown that if the disease prevalence were low in the country, the guidance would have been acceptable. Both Barat Biotech and AstraZeneca vaccines have shown to reduce transmission of the infection by 50 per cent.