Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, said Friday that children who haven’t received the COVID-19 vaccine should continue wearing masks when classes resume this fall.
The nation’s leading infectious disease expert stated the guidance after CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him how parents can keep their children safe while vaccine approval is still pending for them.
“OK, so if you go back to the original CDC guideline, which says that [if] you’re a vaccinated parent or a grandparent, and you have an unvaccinated child in the home, in the home setting, absolutely, you don’t need to wear a mask, you could have physical contact,” Fauci said Friday.
“When the children go out into the community, either an indoor or in certain outdoor settings, they should wear a mask if they’re unvaccinated. When they ultimately get vaccinated, it will be the same as the adults,” the chief medical adviser added.
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Fauci affirmed that classes “absolutely” should resume for in-person sessions in the fall of 2021 after numerous schools across the country moved to online learning following the onset of the pandemic last year.
Pfizer is expected to submit an emergency use authorization application to the Food and Drug Administration in September to widen eligibility to children 2 to 11, though the current timeline would indicate not all students would be vaccinated in time before classes resume.
The medical adviser also said that “most of the schools are going to say you have to wear a mask if you’re in the school and unvaccinated.”
Fauci maintained that local authorities, schools, or businesses are “perfectly justified” to continue to require masks if they want.
His remarks come just days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced people who have received the COVID-19 vaccine no longer need to wear masks in most settings.
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“People who are vaccinated should feel perfectly comfortable in going indoors without a mask,” Fauci said.
