What do vaccines for covid-19 contain?
An expert answers 6:19
(CNN) ––
As more patients and friends complete their covid-19 vaccination, Dr. William Schaffner's phone has been constantly ringing.
Also his email inbox was filled with messages.
People who have been fully vaccinated - that is, those who are two weeks or more after having received their second dose of Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines, or who have already had the only dose of Johnson & Johnson's - - have many Questions for this Vanderbilt University professor of infectious diseases.
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They ask if it is safe to hug their grandchildren now.
Can you play cards with your vaccinated friends?
They can organize a small dinner indoors, but should they forget about inviting the long time maskless guy at the bar?
"I try to answer as many questions as possible, because they are very thoughtful people," Schaffner said.
"These are people who are trying to do their best in these circumstances," he added.
But not everyone has a favorite infectious disease expert among their contacts.
So the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon publish guidelines for those who are already fully vaccinated.
More than 82 million doses of vaccines have been administered in the US And after a year of meetings with mom just for Zoom, the vaccinated want to have guides.
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"I think people need practical advice on how to go about their daily lives," said Julia Marcus, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard.
"I believe that without guidance, people can make uninformed decisions."
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Official: There is nothing "wicked" about delaying the guidelines
The Biden administration has said it has been working on these guidelines for weeks.
They were widely expected to be released this Thursday.
But they are still in the works, according to an official involved in the drafting procedure.
During the Trump administration, White House officials sometimes had a heavy hand on CDC guidelines, dictating what the agency could and could not say, according to CDC officials.
But that is not currently the case with these new guidelines, according to the Biden administration official.
"I don't think anything wicked is happening," the official said.
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As he explained, a draft of the new guidelines has likely been sent to the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services.
This with the objective, he said, that the staff can be aware, in advance, of what they indicate.
"I don't envy the editors of those guides," Schaffner said.
«You can paint some images with a fairly wide brush.
But people want to apply general guidelines to a specific life.
And that's very, very meticulous returns.
There is no way to include everything, ”he said.
Vaccines offer really good protection for vaccinated people, research shows.
And there is good evidence that they help prevent the spread of covid-19.
However, they are not a total "shield," Schaffner said.
People still need to make informed decisions about risk.
CDC must strike a tricky balance with these guidelines, experts said.
The guidelines should encourage people to get vaccinated and help those vaccinated understand that they still need to be careful.
In addition to managing the expectations of the unvaccinated.
"We do not want people who are not fully vaccinated to think that everything has been lifted, that we can leave things behind, and that the pandemic is over, because it is not like that," the official warned.
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More than 64,000 newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases were registered in the US this Thursday alone.
It's not like going back to 2019
The guidelines will not give those vaccinated permission to begin living as if we were going back to 2019 again, according to a Biden administration official.
However, he said, they do offer some hope that the end of total social isolation is near.
For example, you can finally show your vaccinated friends all the DIY projects you did at home last year.
The CDC confirmed that a Politico article accurately stated that the guidelines would indicate that vaccinates can have social interactions in small home gatherings with other fully vaccinated people.
"I think it's certainly a very reasonable first step," said Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious disease physician at the University of Pennsylvania.
However, don't throw away that cloth mask just yet.
The guidelines will advise those vaccinated to continue wearing masks in public.
Also that they keep a good physical distance from others.
"While we all get vaccinated, our main social goal remains to protect those who have not received the vaccine," Richterman said.
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Masks help to do just that.
And there is no guarantee that vaccinated people will not carry the virus in their nose or throat.
A virus that may not make the carrier sick, but could be shed and infect someone who has not yet been vaccinated.
"The masks continue to work and we need them against the variants," Schaffner said.
Public health experts worry that the spread of the most contagious variants could prolong the pandemic.
The guidelines should also help those vaccinated manage interactions with loved ones in their nursing homes.
Precisely, those who have been isolated for more than a year.
They should also include travel tips.
Unfortunately, vaccination is not a "free travel pass," warned Dr. Anthony Fauci on a CNN global forum in early February.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that travel "essential" is a yes.
"But, we don't want people to think that because they got vaccinated, then other public health recommendations just don't apply."
The guidelines will not be entirely prescriptive or tell you exactly what you can and cannot do once you are fully vaccinated.
The guides won't tell you whether or not you can go bowling with Aunt Mary, for example.
Nor whether or not you can meet Grandpa in the cafeteria for a Settlers of Catan game with the new strategy you learned while stuck at home.
“It is impossible to get to that level of detail.
We cannot predict all the situations that human beings will be in, ”explained the Biden official.
“What we can do is give principles for people to think carefully.
It will give people the means to think about it and then they can choose the level of risk they want to take, ”he added.
CNN's Elizabeth Cohen, John Bonifield, Maggie Fox and Virginia Langmaid contributed to this report.
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