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Hi. We're confused about the CDC recommendations that vaccinated people can visit with low-risk unvaccinated people, but only one household at a time. Does this mean a vaccinated person is okay to go visit one house for a few hours, then maybe a different house later that same day (providing everyone is low-risk)? Or should they keep some time between visits?
Thanks for this important question. The CDC and other experts are trying to be thoughtful in providing guidance that allows for people who are fully vaccinated to begin to return back to some levels of normalcy. Thus, a fully vaccinated person may visit low-risk unvaccinated persons and maintaining these visits to a single household at a time is one way to ensure that people do not take these instructions too liberally. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.html
Yet, there is only so much that can be succinctly stated in public guidance without becoming too complex and lengthy. So, there is no stipulation in the guidance for some time between visits. And, yes, a person may technically visit more than one household in a single day.
Nonetheless, let’s examine the broader context and intent of the guidance. It should be clear that we do not want people to try and schedule as many households as possible into a single day, as each additional household would incrementally add some risk. A theoretical example for illustration may go something like this: a fully-vaccinated person schedules a visit with a different household every 2 hours; this person is really really excited to finally visit friends and family and so was able to “fit” 8 visits that day! But, we can imagine the cumulative risk for this “busy” day might be high, even when visiting only a single low-risk household at a time. Therefore, there is a tension between allowing low-risk visits and abusing this freedom to an extreme, further creating an environment for high levels of viral transmissions. I hope this explanation helps.
It comes down to using common sense and respectfully recognizing that we are not yet out of this pandemic. Plus, I haven’t mentioned that those variant viruses are increasingly spreading, so let’s not create any behavior that worsens the situation.
