Parents should continue to let their children wear face masks to protect against COVID-19, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
What he said: “It’s understandable why people want to take masks off the kids. But, right now, given the level of activity that we have, it is risky,” Fauci said, according to Fox News.
- “Now we could get lucky, cause the trajectory right now is going way down,” Fauci added. “And it very well may be that if you take masks off of kids in the next week or so, it’s going to keep going down. But you have to be careful.”
The bigger picture: Fauci’s comments come as COVID-19 cases are starting to dip and more states are beginning to open up by loosening COVID-19 restrictions and lifting mask mandates, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
- Fauci, the White House medical adviser on the coronavirus, told Reuters in a new interview this week that the U.S. is slowly working toward normalcy.
- “You don’t want to be reckless and throw everything aside, but you’ve got to start inching towards that.”
- Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday that the CDC is still recommending masks for everyone.
- “We must consider hospital capacity as an additional important barometer. We want to give people a break from things like mask wearing when these metrics are better and then have the ability to reach for them again should things worsen,” she said.