Vaccinated people in Beaufort, Jasper Co. should wear face masks indoors, CDC warns
The federal government is urging fully vaccinated residents in Beaufort and Jasper counties to wear face masks in indoor public spaces like grocery stores, restaurants and other shopping centers.
The counties have a high level of COVID-19 transmission, according to Wednesday data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC on Tuesday backtracked and urged both vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans to use face coverings in communities with a high or substantial amount of coronavirus spread.
Beaufort and Jasper counties now meet that threshold, like most other areas in South Carolina, federal data show.
The counties have each recorded more than 50 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days, according to the CDC.
The CDC’s new guidance is a stark reversal from mask recommendations that federal health officials made just two months ago.
The CDC in May initially told fully inoculated residents that it was OK to not wear face coverings in most indoor spaces.
But Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, on Tuesday said the federal government decided to issue new recommendations to combat the super-contagious Delta variant, which is rapidly spreading through parts of the South and other states across the country.
The Delta variant, which is able to sidestep part of the body’s vaccine-induced immune response, is likely the dominant strain in South Carolina, according to estimates from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
“This is not a decision that we at CDC have made lightly. This weighs heavily on me,” Walensky told reporters Tuesday. “I know at 18 months through this pandemic, not only are people tired, they’re frustrated.
“It is not a welcome piece of news that masking is going to be a part of people’s lives who have already been vaccinated.”
The vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are still effective against the Delta variant, but new data show that vaccinated people, in rare “breakthrough infections,” may carry viral loads similar to those in unvaccinated residents, if they contract the variant, Walensky said.
In other words, vaccinated people could potentially spread Delta to those who are still unvaccinated, the CDC director said.
“The Delta variant is showing every day its willingness to outsmart us,” Walensky said. The variant, which was first discovered in India late last year, behaves in a unique and different way from past coronavirus strains, she said.
The new guidance primarily affects areas with low vaccination rates that have become COVID-19 hotspots, she said.
South Carolina, which has recorded a significant uptick in new infections over the past week, has one of the lowest inoculation rates in the country. Only 44.3% of residents 12 or older have been fully vaccinated.
Just two counties in the Palmetto State currently have moderate levels of COVID-19 transmission, according to the CDC: Bamberg and Greenwood.
In Beaufort County, 49.1% of residents 12 and up have completed inoculation, according to DHEC, but the county’s average COVID-19 positivity rate spiked to 13.6% on Sunday, which was a level last seen in mid-January when South Carolina’s devastating winter surge first began to wane.
Whether residents and local governments act on the CDC’s new guidance, however, remains to be seen. Masks are unpopular and have become a major political flashpoint.
The S.C. Legislature has effectively banned public K-12 school districts from establishing new mask mandates for the upcoming school year via a budget proviso passed in the General Assembly.
And Gov. Henry McMaster recently issued an executive order that blocked municipalities from using his prior COVID-19 state of emergency declaration to support and impose community mask mandates.
McMaster in a Tuesday tweet doubled down on his opposition to face covering requirements.
“The Delta Variant poses a real threat to South Carolinians. However, shutting our state down, closing schools and mandating masks is not the answer,” he wrote. “Personal responsibility is.”
(The CDC has not recommended school closures or new lockdown measures.)
The federal government’s Tuesday mask guidance can be found in its entirety here: https://bit.ly/CDCMaskRecommendations
Note: Vaccine data in this story are current as of Wednesday morning.
