Daily Archives: July 29, 2021

Jul 29 2021

Helping you to choose what’s right for you and your family and most importantly your health

Friends and family grilling outside

When You’ve Been Fully Vaccinated

How to Protect Yourself and Others Updated July 27, 2021 Print Safer Activities for You and Your Family

  • If you are fully vaccinated, you can participate in many of the activities that you did before the pandemic.
  • To maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading it to others, wear a mask indoors in public if you are in an area of substantial or high transmission.
  • Wearing a mask is most important if you have a weakened immune system or if, because of your age or an underlying medical condition, you are at increased risk for severe disease, or if someone in your household has a weakened immune system, is at increased risk for severe disease, or is unvaccinated. If this applies to you or your household, you might choose to wear a mask regardless of the level of transmission in your area.
  • You should continue to wear a mask where required by laws, rules, regulations, or local guidance.

band aid light icon If you haven’t been vaccinated yet, find a vaccine.

COVID-19 vaccines are effective at protecting you from getting sick. Based on what we know about COVID-19 vaccines, people who have been fully vaccinated can do things that they had stopped doing because of the pandemic.

These recommendations can help you make decisions about daily activities after you are fully vaccinated. They are not intended for healthcare settings.

Have You Been Fully Vaccinated?

In general, people are considered fully vaccinated: ±

  • 2 weeks after their second dose in a 2-dose series, such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or
  • 2 weeks after a single-dose vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine

If you don’t meet these requirements, regardless of your age, you are NOT fully vaccinated. Keep taking all precautions until you are fully vaccinated.

If you have a condition or are taking medications that weaken your immune system, you may NOT be protected even if you are fully vaccinated. You should continue to take all precautions recommended for unvaccinated people until advised otherwise by your healthcare provider.

COVID-19_banner_when_fully_vaccinated_01

 What You Can Do

If you’ve been fully vaccinated:

  • You can resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic.
  • To reduce the risk of being infected with the Delta variant and possibly spreading it to others, wear a mask indoors in public if you are in an area of substantial or high transmission.
  • You might choose to wear a mask regardless of the level of transmission if you have a weakened immune system or if, because of your age or an underlying medical condition, you are at increased risk for severe disease, or if a member of your household has a weakened immune system, is at increased risk for severe disease, or is unvaccinated.
  • If you travel in the United States, you do not need to get tested before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel.
  • You need to pay close attention to the situation at your international destination before traveling outside the United States.
    • You do NOT need to get tested before leaving the United States unless your destination requires it.
    • You still need to show a negative test result or documentation of recovery from COVID-19 before boarding an international flight to the United States.
    • You should still get tested 3-5 days after international travel.
    • You do NOT need to self-quarantine after arriving in the United States.
  • If you’ve been around someone who has COVID-19, you should get tested 3-5 days after your exposure, even if you don’t have symptoms. You should also wear a mask indoors in public for 14 days following exposure or until your test result is negative. You should isolate for 10 days if your test result is positive.
multiple images of people doing everyday things

What You Should Keep Doing

For now, if you’ve been fully vaccinated:

  • You will still need to follow guidance at your workplace and local businesses.
  • If you travel, you should still take steps to protect yourself and others.
  • Wearing a mask over your nose and mouth is required on planes, buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation traveling into, within, or out of the United States and while indoors at U.S. transportation hubs such as airports and stations. Travelers are not required to wear a mask in outdoor areas of a conveyance (like on open deck areas of a ferry or the uncovered top deck of a bus).
  • Fully vaccinated international travelers arriving in the United States are still required to get tested 3 days before travel by air into the United States (or show documentation of recovery from COVID-19 in the past 3 months) and should still get tested 3-5 days after their trip.
  • You should still watch out for symptoms of COVID-19, especially if you’ve been around someone who is sick. If you have symptoms of COVID-19, you should get tested and stay home and away from others. If your test is positive, isolate at home for 10 days.
  • People who have a condition or are taking medications that weaken the immune system, should continue to take all precautions recommended for unvaccinated people until advised otherwise by their healthcare provider.

What We Know

  • COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective at preventing COVID-19, including severe illness and death.
  • COVID-19 vaccines are effective against severe disease and death from variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 currently circulating in the United States, including the Delta variant.
  • Infections happen in only a small proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, even with the Delta variant. When these infections occur among vaccinated people, they tend to be mild.
  • If you are fully vaccinated and become infected with the Delta variant, you can spread the virus to others.
  • People with weakened immune systems, including people who take immunosuppressive medications, may not be protected even if fully vaccinated.

What We’re Still Learning

  • How long COVID-19 vaccines can protect people.

Want to learn more about these recommendations? Read our expanded Interim Public Health Recommendations for Fully Vaccinated People.

± This guidance applies to COVID-19 vaccines currently authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson (J&J)/Janssen COVID-19 vaccines.  This guidance can also be applied to COVID-19 vaccines that have been listed for emergency use by the World Health Organization (e.g. AstraZeneca/Oxford).

Related Pages

Last Updated July 27, 2021 Content source: National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), Division of Viral Diseases homeVaccines

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https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.html

Jul 29 2021

Suspected COVID-Positive Migrants in Texas Suggest Flaws in DHS Quarantine Policies

cis.org

By Andrew R. Arthur on July 29, 2021 5

A La Joya, Texas, police officer was waved into the local Whataburger this week by an individual who was concerned about a group of individuals there who appeared to be ill. The officer discovered a family of migrants who claimed they had been apprehended several days before by the Border Patrol and had tested positive for COVID-19. This suggests there are serious flaws in DHS’s quarantine policies.

Back in March, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas released a statement on the situation at the Southwest border. He asserted that the Biden administration would continue to expel migrants—including migrant families—under Trump-era orders issued by the CDC under Title 42 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mayorkas admitted that the department could only expel family migrants if the Mexican government agreed to take them back, which is becoming a rarity; of the more than 50,000 migrants in family units that were apprehended by Border Patrol at the Southwest border in June, fewer than 8,100 were expelled under Title 42.

The secretary asserted, however, that DHS was taking steps to contain the spread of the coronavirus by such migrants and had “partnered with community-based organizations to test and quarantine families that Mexico has not had the capacity to receive.”

He further contended that his department had “developed a framework for partnering with local mayors and public health officials to pay for 100% of the expense for testing, isolation, and quarantine for migrants”.

Which brings me back to the Whataburger in La Joya, a border town just west of McAllen.

According to La Joya Police Sgt. Manuel Casas, no one had told his city or his police department that the migrants were there, “and no one told us that these people were possibly ill.” I suppose that DHS’s ability to “partner” only goes so far.

Apparently, the family was staying at the nearby Texas Inn & Suites, in rooms that had been booked by Catholic Charities of The Rio Grande Valley to house migrants who had been apprehended by the Border Patrol and released.

Sgt. Casas explained: “The information we have is that everyone that is staying in that hotel is COVID-19 positive because it’s being rented out for them.”

The hotel denies that they have “any problems” with COVID-19 (although “officers observed 20 to 30 people outside not wearing masks”, according to Fox News). This article suggests, however, that DHS’s quarantine regime poses a danger to those living in towns along the Southwest border (and elsewhere), because it appears to be no “quarantine” at all.

CDC explains that the concept of quarantine is deeply rooted in world immigration history:

The practice of quarantine, as we know it, began during the 14th century in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics. Ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing. This practice, called quarantine, was derived from the Italian words quaranta giorni which mean 40 days.

Today, the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at CDC “is empowered to detain, medically examine, or conditionally release individuals and wildlife suspected of carrying a communicable disease.”

That division still runs 20 quarantine stations, mostly at major ports of entry. The closest one to La Joya is in Houston, but it is the relatively far away El Paso quarantine station that has jurisdiction over the town.

If COVID-positive migrants (or anyone else for that matter) are free to leave a hotel in which they are being housed and head down the road for burger, they aren’t in “quarantine”.

Sgt. Casas made clear that his department does not have the authority to “stop any of the migrants from leaving the hotel and moving on to another destination in the United States”. That means that La Joya’s problems are your problems, too.

But assuming he’s correct (and there is no reason to believe he isn’t), even if the police could restrict the movements of a group of COVID-positive migrants in order to protect the community, town officials were never told those migrants were there to begin with.

When it comes to COVID and the border, it seems like DHS is saying one thing and doing another. Worse, at the same time that President Biden is warning of “a pandemic of the unvaccinated”, it seems his administration is handing COVID-positive migrants over to NGOs with no restrictions on their movement, and no notice to local officials in the places they are housed.

To quote the president, “C’mon, man!”

https://cis.org/Arthur/Suspected-COVIDPositive-Migrants-Texas-Suggest-Flaws-DHS-Quarantine-Policies?&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany

Jul 29 2021

Facts mean everything!!