Washington Asks Fully Vaccinated People To Keep Wearing Masks

OLYMPIA, WA — Masks will be sticking around for the foreseeable future, even as vaccination rates continue to climb across Washington.

The Washington State Department of Health announced Tuesday they had updated their pandemic safety guidance to say that even fully vaccinated people should continue wearing masks or other facial coverings while indoors.

The move brings Washington's pandemic regulations in line with new Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, also released Tuesday, which ask that vaccinated Americans not only continue to wear masks indoors, but also keep practicing safe social distancing, and avoiding crowded, poorly ventilated spaces.

The new guidance also asks that fully vaccinated people continue to wear masks on planes, trains and buses, and will still be required to take COVID-19 tests after returning from abroad.

The updated CDC guidelines are not all new restrictions, however.

"Over the past year, we have spent a lot of time telling Americans what you can't do," said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky at a White House coronavirus task force briefing. "Today, I am going to tell you some of the things you can do, if you are fully vaccinated."

Those new benefits for fully vaccinated people include:

• Gathering indoors with fully vaccinated people without wearing masks or socially distancing.
• Gathering indoors with unvaccinated people from one other household without masks or social distancing, unless one of those people has an increased risk for severe COVID-19 illness.
• Performing outdoor activities without a mask, except in crowded settings like a music festival or sporting event.
• For travel within the U.S., fully vaccinated people do not need to be tested before or after travel, or enter self-quarantine after travel.

To be considered fully vaccinated, a person must have waited two weeks since their second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or two weeks after the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The CDC says the guidance is likely to change as researchers learn more about how well vaccines prevent transmission and how long they remain effective, but that the new restrictions were necessary until they know more.

As of the latest update to the DOH's COVID-19 dashboard Saturday, a total 5,157,791 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered across Washington state.

Related: New Mask Guidelines For Vaccinated Americans: 5 Things To Know