The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wanted to avoid its new mask guidance leaking ahead of time, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said Thursday.
The CDC announced Thursday that people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 no longer need to wear masks or practice social distancing indoors or outdoors, in most circumstances.
In response to reports that the White House did not have much advance warning that the CDC was planning to update its guidance today, Collins said, “Well, it apparently was the case that the CDC was making this decision and didn't want to have any big sort of leaking happen, so this is sometimes the way things go.”
White House officials, like many Americans around the nation, seemed to embrace the new guidance, Collins noted.
“It’s clearly electrified the country,” Collins added. “The White House played a pretty good role in that by changing their schedule and having the President and the vice president come right on out without their masks into the Rose Garden, to indicate – in a very photogenic way – what's happened.”