Even among people vaccinated, experts recommend the continued use of masks. CDC and WHO have issued contradictory guidelines about masking rules for those who already got their vaccines. By: Jenny Manrique The reopening of the economy amid the pandemic has generated confusion among Americans about whether or not they should continue wearing masks. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says that vaccinated people can forgo the mask, while the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that even those who have already received the double dose against COVID-19 should continue wearing them. There is no federal policy on this regard, and states and counties issue their own guidelines. Three medical experts speaking at a briefing hosted by Ethnic Media Services, warned that the masks are here to stay, especially given the rapid spread of the powerful Delta variant, one of the most contagious and deadly of the coronavirus strains identified so far. It is more transmissible than other variants such as P1 and Alpha, and even such diseases as smallpox. “The Delta variant is a 2.0 pandemic variant,” said Dr. Eric Feigl Ding, public health scientist who is currently a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. “It is two times more transmissible than the oldest strain Wuhan 1.0, and it causes 4.9 times greater risk of hospitalization than the original strain ... Basically it’s faster, it’s more severe and it’s very vaccine evasive.” Delta is the dominant variant in the UK and India where COVID infections have skyrocketed. Since even those who have received too shots and gained immunity can still transmit the virus, giving up the masks is feeding the chain of contagion. “The science is really settled around masks,” Ding said. “Studies, including those from the CDC, show that masks help, especially if you double-mask, by reducing aerosols inhaled by somene else. The scientist emphasized that the best protection comes from the socalled premium masks most commonly used by medical personnel: K95, FFP2, N95, 3M. But using a double cloth mask considerably reduces the risks of contagion. The biggest debate now is about whether vaccinated people should continue to wear masks, and this answer depends on vaccine efficacy, which is increasingly being tested with the emergence of new variants. Doctors warn that the constant mutation of the virus will favor the appearance of other strains, because as long as herd immunity is not reached, the coronavirus will continue spreading. And herd immunity is an elusive goal in the United States where only half the population is vaccinated. In some counties vaccination rates are as low as 20%. “Anywhere that the virus is growing, whether it’s in a child or a young person, even if there is no disease, the virus is changing, so mutations will continue to accumulate indefinitely,” said Dr. Ben Neuman, Chief virologist at the Global Health Research Complex at Texas A&M University. “The more we let (the virus) mass infect and the less mitigation we take against it, it eventually will find an immunocompromised person or someone suffering from cancer, so we have another immune disorder or even worse mutations,” added Newman. In the last three weeks, COVID cases 39
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