Some experts at odds over CDC travel guidelines
The United States hit an important milestone in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic this week: More than 9% of Americans are fully vaccinated against the disease it causes, White House officials said, a number that exceeds the country’s total number of confirmed coronavirus cases. Such a benchmark shows that the United States is “turning a corner,” the Biden administration said — but not yet for travel.
The White House’s announcement coincided with Monday’s issuance of guidance for fully vaccinated Americans by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Under that guidance, vaccinated people two weeks from their second shot can safely hold small indoor gatherings with other vaccinated people, without masks or distancing. They may also reasonably visit with lowrisk unvaccinated individuals, such as children, without masks. Travel, however, still is deemed inadvisable because of the potential for vaccinated people to carry and transmit the coronavirus, which can cause the illness COVID-19, to others who are not vaccinated.
Big names in the health and travel industries disagree as to whether such caution is warranted at this point in the pandemic, as vaccinations in many countries ramp up but coronavirus variants continue to stir global concern. Besides forgoing nonessential travel, the CDC guidance says vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans should continue to avoid medium and large gatherings, wear masks, and maintain distance in public spaces.
Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington
University, pushed back against the CDC in an appearance Monday on CNN, saying the agency “is being far overly cautious in a way that defies common sense.” Dr. Wen pointed to evidence that vaccinated people are less likely to transmit the coronavirus, as well as new CDC quarantine guidance that says vaccinated travelers do not need to quarantine after exposure to COVID-19 if they do not display symptoms.
“And I actually would go further and say that people who are fully vaccinated should be able to travel, should be encouraged to travel, and that’s one of those incentives we can give” for people to become vaccinated,” Dr. Wen said.
But other health experts and U.S. health officials say that overt caution now is the point, and that it could facilitate a quicker return to travel later. Carlos Acuna-Villaorduna, an epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center, says the more-contagious COVID19 variants that have entered the United States, particularly those first identified South Africa and Brazil, require extreme caution to prevent another wave of cases.
“The rationale of the CDC is to not be overtly optimistic, because of the possibility of travel exposing people to these COVID variants,” Dr. Acuna-Villaorduna said. “We don’t know yet what are going to be the true effects of these variants, and it might be a minor effect, but the worst-case scenario here is that if a tricky variant, particularly the South African one, [takes over], we are going to have a third wave, maybe even a fourth wave, in this country.”
While data suggests that vaccinated people will circulate less of the virus, he noted, the variants’ transmissibility makes even a small number of cases riskier.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Monday that pandemic trends support a need to discourage Americans from traveling.
“Every time that there’s a surge in travel, we have a surge in cases in this country,” Dr. Walensky said. “We know that many of our variants have emerged from international places, and we know that the travel corridor is a place where people are mixing a lot. ... our next set of guidance will have more science around what vaccinated people can do, perhaps travel being among them.”