Yahoo Finance Presents: Dr. Rochelle Walensky

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky sat down with Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani to discuss the CDC’s latest mask guidance, her thoughts on vaccine administration, and the U.S. responsibility to help other countries manage their own surges.

Video transcript

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ANJALEE KHEMLANI: What's going on with regard to new mask rules that came out last week? And joining me now is CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Dr. Walensky, thank you so much for joining me today.

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: Thanks so much for the fun conversation.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: OK. So let's start off with the rules that came down Friday. I know that a lot has been discussed about what spurred it, where-- whether or not there was pressure. But in general, was this supposed to be a way to simplify rules for the American public or were you also looking at incentivizing more vaccinations through this?

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: So I have really always told the American people that I would tell them the science and change our guidance with-- in lockstep with the science. So here's where we are.

You know, cases in this country have come down. They've come down more than 30% over the last two weeks, which is really extraordinary. Our deaths are down the lowest that they've been since April 2020. So we're in a better place in terms of cases, deaths, hospitalizations in this country.

Second is we have now vaccine available, essentially, to anyone who wants it. It is available in tens of thousands of locations across the United States. 90% of Americans live within five miles of the vaccine site. And there are more and more opportunities to get vaccinated.

So vaccine is available. Cases are down. And then really, the third big thing is that really over the last two weeks, including of-- late as Friday, we have had escalating evidence of the value and importance of vaccines in three different areas.

One is how effective they actually are working in the real-world setting. So they're working just like they did in the clinical trials, 90% to 97% effectivevenss.

Two is emerging data that has demonstrated they work against the variants that are circulating here in the United States. That was just published in "The New England Journal" a week ago.

And then third is that, for the most part, we are not seeing people who are infected despite the vaccine being able to transmit it to others. So with those three pieces of evidence, all of which that have emerged and compounded over the last week or two, we really felt like now was the time to change the guidance to say individuals who are vaccinated truly are safe to take off their masks.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely. And on that note, of course, the focus is on vaccinated individuals. But, you know, businesses have taken to relaxing mask mandates. States have taken to relaxing mandates in some cases.

So do you expect possibly a surge or are you, you know, anticipating that there might be a rise in cases in some areas as a result of this? And if so, you know, is there any rule change that might happen if we start to see that?

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: So first, I want to say that these were guidances that laid the foundation of all the steps that we need to take now to get our country back to reopen, back to normal. We needed this information in order to take all of those next steps.

Those are going to be incremental steps. They're going to go at different paces in different communities. And in fact, it doesn't say, everybody rip off your mask on Friday. It says, take this information. We've been masking for 16 months straight. And use it as you think about how you might open your business, your community, your house of worship.

And CDC will be in your school. And CDC will be assisting over the next several weeks with increased-- with more and more guidance to help inform that. But this really needed to be the first piece of that information in order to do so.

We're really encouraging people who have not been vaccinated to continue to mask. We're really encouraging people who have not been vaccinated to get vaccinated. And because we really are asking individuals to take their, you know, health into their hands here, we are watching Memorial Day really carefully. We have had people who have-- you know, when we have holidays, people tend to gather. After those gatherings, historically, we've seen some surges.

But really, you know, with, you know, a third of Americans vaccinated, more than a third of Americans fully vaccinated, and many, many more on their way and partially vaccinated, we are saying, like, continue to do everything that you were doing before if you're not vaccinated. And, oh, by the way, get vaccinated. And if you're just an individual who's been vaccinated, you can really do all of those things without a mask safely.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: What might some of those incoming guidance look like considering that, you know, since even before this new administration, there were concerns or-- not really criticisms, but just, really, a need for or desire for and request for more federal guidance and specific, you know, if you reach this threshold of cases, do this? Is that going to be along the lines of what you're looking to disperse?

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: Well, so we know, actually, that we need to update our camp guidance, for example. Two big things happened last week. We were able to vaccinate now 12- to 15-year-olds, right? So we need to be able to update our camp guidance for that.

And then we need to update our camp guidance with regard to what happens for-- if you have a fully vaccinated camp, for example. We need to update our school guidance. Businesses are interested in how we can help them and update our guidance there.

So we have a lot of work that we need to do in the coming weeks to update our guidance. The other thing is I'm watching cases at least twice a day in this country. We are watching this incredibly carefully. With cases being low, decreased viral circulation, we really hope that that will mean decrease emergence of variants. But there is travel coming in. We're doing a lot of monitoring of variants.

So what we have always said is we believe that this is safe at this time. The epidemic parameters, the vaccine access, the science tells us this is really safe at this time. And we're going to continue to be vigilant.

And this pandemic has helped-- thrown us curve balls before. We're going to really hope we don't get any again. But we're going to be vigilant just in case we do.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Well, I'm glad you mentioned the travel. We know that the TSA just reported 1.85 million people traveling on Sunday. Definitely, more people are taking to the skies. And we also know that around the world, the virus continues to spread. Taiwan, which had it under control, is now seeing a bit of a surge.

So with all of this in play, are there any concerns about, you know, what will be an eventual return about the gatherings that will happen, to your point about the holidays? And also, for an event as large as the Olympics, do you have thoughts about how we should be thinking about these things?

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: I think what we've learned during this period of time is that we are, you know, what the WHO has said. No one is safe until everyone is safe. We have been working extraordinarily hard with our-- across the globe, we have-- you know, we're in 60 countries.

And CDC-- we've been working closely with India, for example, to provide technical guidance, to provide assistance, to provide oxygen. And I think we have a responsibility to make sure that we assist to where there are surges in other places because, in fact, surges in other places could easily mean danger for us as well. So yes, I think we have to keep a close eye on that and assess where we can.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Let's talk about this mask messaging. You've gotten a lot of pushback on one hand. You know, early on, the CDC was criticized for moving too slowly. And now, based on the new mask guidelines, it feels like everyone feels a little bit of whiplash.

So simultaneously, there's a lot of concern about vaccine hesitancy. What have you seen as the struggle? And how do we sort of work on public messaging, on public health messaging right now? Are there standards to follow or are we sort of learning as it comes?

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: You know, there's been 16 months where we have been saying, you should wear a mask, you should distance, you should protect yourself, you should stay home. We're now in a place in this country where cases are coming down. And reopening is going to be hard.

And what I would say is there's-- this is going to take just as much messaging, if not more, as to what is safe as we start to emerge from this. And I think we should not lose sight of the message that this means things are better, right? This is a good thing, not that it's not going to be hard, not that we're going to do it by tiptoeing and not diving right in. But this is good news.

Cases are down. Deaths are down. Our vaccines work better than we ever thought they might. And so now what we really need to do is to gradually get back.

It's true we were criticized for going too fast-- or for to-- going too slow. We've been criticized for going too fast. And quite honestly, what I really need to do is make sure that we're going at the speed of the science. And that's what I told the American people I would do. And that's what I'm doing.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely. And on the state of science, we definitely still have a lot more information to learn about the vaccines and how they work either together, with others. I know there's questions about the booster market and how that will play out for vaccine companies.

I also know that during the ACIP meeting, there was some concerns about co-administration, especially for children. Can you walk us through then what the thinking is right now, what the data says right now?

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: Yeah. Thank you for that. That's really important. So up until now, we haven't had any data, and in fact, we still don't have any data, as to whether you can give your COVID vaccine at the same time you give a measles vaccine or a tetanus vaccine or a hepatitis B vaccine. There have been no data. And there continue to be no data in that.

The thing that's really of concern is that right now, we're about 11 million childhood doses of vaccine behind. And many of them are in our adolescent age group, who are right now also eligible for a COVID vaccine. So the discussion among the experts at ACIP was to say, given how many vaccines we are behind and that we have these adolescents coming in for a COVID vaccine, should we co-administer them?

Generally, the discussion went to there's a lot of concern about the vaccines that kids are behind and that if we think that this is going to be our only opportunity to catch them up, we-- and measuring the risk benefit, it is probably beneficial to give them together. We do have to be cautious of the fact that-- of the overlapping side effects and of the concern that if you get side effects from the COVID vaccine, somebody may attribute it to another vaccine.

So we really are asking our providers to take each of those issues into consideration when they-- should they decide to co-vaccinate. We don't really believe that there's harm, again, operating with not a lot of data, but really working hard to make sure that our adolescents do not miss more vaccine.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely. Well, we'll keep an eye on it. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, thank you so much for joining us today-- and hope to have you back soon.

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: Thanks so much for having me.