Do Vaccinated People Still Need to Wear Face Masks?
Don’t toss your masks out just yet. As the more transmissible delta variant takes hold, and some countries are reinstating precautions, even vaccinated people may want to mask up in certain situations.
“People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, World Health Organization assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, told reporters on Friday. “Vaccine alone won’t stop community transmission. People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene … the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you’re vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing.”
“WHO is recommending wearing masks even if vaccinated because breakthrough infections will happen with any of the vaccines and if spread into a highly unvaccinated community (because the majority of the world has not been vaccinated) there could be widespread disease that occurs and new outbreaks developing,” says Dr. Jill Weatherhead, assistant professor of adult and pediatric infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, in an email. “This is true for any variant, but because the delta variant is highly transmissible it will more readily spread throughout communities.”
