The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued long-awaited advice to Americans who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, freeing them to gather indoors in small groups with precautions while still adhering to masking and social distancing in public spaces.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said at Monday’s White House news conference, “With more and more people getting vaccinated, each day we are starting to turn a corner, and as more Americans are vaccinated, a growing body of evidence now tell that there are some activities that fully vaccinated people can resume at low risk to themselves.”

The report advised that given current research findings:

•Fully vaccinated Americans may gather indoors in private home in small groups without masks or distancing.

•Vaccinated Americans need not quarantine or get tested if they have a known exposure to the virus, as long as they do not develop symptoms.

•In public, vaccinated people must continue to wear mask, maintain social distance, and take other precautions, such as avoiding poorly ventilated spaces, covering coughs and sneezes, and washing hands often.

•Vaccinated people should avoid gatherings with multiple households, as well as large- and medium-sized gatherings.

•Unnecessary travel continues to be discouraged ahead of spring break. Dr. Walensky noted that virus cases have surged every time there has been an increase in travel.

Good news for grandparents and grandchildren who have refrained from contact for the past year, as the agency said that vaccinated people may visit indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household as long as no one among the unvaccinated is at risk for severe disease if infected with the coronavirus. In practice, that means fully-vaccinated grandparents may visit unvaccinated adult children and healthy grandchildren of the same household without masks or physical distancing.

The CDC recommendations arrived as state officials move to reopen businesses and schools amid a drop in virus cases and deaths. Federal health officials have warned repeatedly against loosening restrictions too quickly, fearing that the moves may result in a fourth surge of infections and deaths.

The CDC’s advice is aimed at those for whom at least two weeks have passed since they received the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines and for those for whom at least two weeks have passed since receiving a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

As of March 10, about 95.7 million people have been fully vaccinated, according to CDC data, and providers are administering 2.1 million doses per day, on average.

Uncertainties remain because scientists do not yet understand whether and how often immunized people may still transmit the virus and about how well vaccines protect against emerging variants of the virus, as well as how long the vaccine protections lasts.

PHOTO BY ALISON KENNEDY