White House senior medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that it was “common sense” the outdoor COVID-19 transmission rate is “minuscule.”
“I think it’s pretty common sense now that outdoor risk is really, really quite low, particularly—I mean, if you are a vaccinated person, wearing a mask outdoors, I mean, obviously, the risk is minuscule,” Fauci explained to host George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
“What I believe you’re going to be hearing, what the country is going to be hearing soon is updated guidelines from the CDC. The CDC is a science-based organization. They don’t want to make any guidelines unless they look at the data, and the data backs it up.”
‘COMMON SENSE’: Dr. Fauci flips position on wearing masks outsidehttps://t.co/XVCJBegnEr
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 26, 2021
“But, when you look around at the commonsense situation, obviously, the risk is really very low, particularly if you are vaccinated,” Fauci added.
Health experts have recently recommended that local authorities drop outdoor mask mandates as numerous studies have shown that the risk of outdoor transmission is low. (RELATED: University Of California, Berkeley Bans Solitary Outdoor Exercise As Part Of New COVID-19 Restrictions)
While several cities across the U.S. such as Charleston, Nashville and Denver have either dropped or relaxed their outdoor mask mandates, many states still require masks to be worn outdoors when social distancing cannot be maintained.
Several media outlets, including Slate, The New Republic, and The Atlantic, were recently criticized by social media users after questioning the continued use of masks outdoors.