The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has walked back the claim made by its director that vaccinated people don’t carry the coronavirus.
CDC chief Rochelle Walensky said earlier this week that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick.”
But the health agency clarified the statement Thursday, saying “the evidence isn’t clear” and that Walensky was “speaking broadly.”
“It’s possible that some people who are fully vaccinated could get COVID-19,” a CDC spokesperson told the New York Times. “The evidence isn’t clear whether they can spread the virus to others. We are continuing to evaluate the evidence.”
Dr. Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said confusion about bulletproof immunity could lead to Americans refusing to wear a mask after getting the jabs.
“This opens the door to the skeptics who think the government is sugarcoating the science,” Bach told the paper.
On Monday, Walensky told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: “Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick.”
“And that it’s not just in the clinical trials, it’s also in real-world data,” she added.
Walensky’s comments aren’t backed by scientific studies that a vaccine can completely stop transmission of the bug. No vaccine to date has been proven to be 100 percent effective on all people.
Earlier this week, the CDC published a study of 4,000 people showing Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines prevent up to 90 percent of coronavirus infections after the second dose.
