Social distancing, masking not going away anytime soon, public health director says

Feb. 14—With about 1.3 million Illinoisans receiving at least one dose of a two-dose regimen of COVID-19 vaccine, anticipation is growing that life will return to normal soon.

Unfortunately, that won't be the case for many months, according to Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Gatherings of multiple households, long-awaited unmasked visits with friends and loved ones, grandparents being able to hug their grandchildren again — all of that should be avoided, she said, until Illinois reaches "herd immunity," or when 70% to 80% of the population has been vaccinated, and if COVID-19 prevalence rates remain low.

The State Journal-Register interviewed Ezike, a board-certified internist and pediatrician, a few days ago to ask her advice on what people who have been fully vaccinated should and shouldn't do in the near future. Here's an edited transcript from the interview:

Question: Can people who are fully vaccinated abandon social-distancing and masking recommendations to any extent?

Answer: "Until many more people have been vaccinated, which is going to be still in the second half of this year, we still have to maintain a lot of the personal mitigations in terms of masking and distancing. We are still learning the extent to which the vaccine prevents the individual from being infected, and therefore if they are still infected, they could potentially still transmit the virus to someone else, i.e., infect someone else. So while we are sorting that out, we don't want someone who may be protected themselves from severe illness, we don't want them to be the reason that someone else who may not be vaccinated, who is very vulnerable, who could have a very severe course, we don't want that vaccinated person to be the source of someone else's infection."

Q: Isn't this the same advice you gave around the Christmas and New Year's holidays about avoiding indoor get-togethers with people outside your own household?

A: "It is for now, until we get a much larger swath of the population vaccinated. I know people who are eager to see their grandchildren that they haven't seen in almost a year, but those grandchildren wouldn't be immunized, so we don't want to pass any infections on to the grandchildren, who then might go on to infect other high-risk adults.

"I think it is important what one person getting their vaccine means and what it doesn't mean. The one person getting their vaccine doesn't mean that the pandemic is over and that masks go away and that large parties should become the way of the day. That only becomes a thing when you're thinking about 80% of the population being vaccinated, but obviously we're not there yet."

Q: Do you think people will like hearing this news?

A: "Remembering even though that's not maybe the news we want to hear, we weren't even thinking this time last year that we would have vaccine now. ... So the fact that we even have vaccine and we've been distributing for the last almost seven, eight weeks or two months is a great thing. ... We can focus on the over 1 million people in the state who have received at least one vaccine. The large number of seniors who have received one or two doses means that we will see a decrease in the number of deaths from this virus. So there are things that we absolutely can be excited about. Less of our parents and grandparents succumbing to this virus — that is a big win for our state for all the lives that won't be lost. Yes, we want it all, but we have to look at the glasses as half-full."

Q: What if everyone in your friend group or in your family has been vaccinated? Is it then safe to get together without all of the masking and social distancing?

A: "I don't want to dampen the happiness that people feel who are vaccinated, but as with most things in life, nothing is 100% guaranteed. This vaccine was billed at about 95% efficacy, so that means that if you had a group of 100 people that were vaccinated, it's likely that five of the people maybe didn't get that full protection that we are assuming. ... And not knowing who they are, you'd want to continue to maintain precautions, but obviously the risk would be much lower. But again, trying to limit the list, you would want to continue those precautions."

Q: Your recommendations would seem to conflict with what Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, said recently on NBC'sToday Show. When asked whether two people who don't live together can safely get together without masking and social distancing after they are fully vaccinated, Fauci said on Feb. 11, "The answer is ultimately going to be 'yes' with that."

A: "Until everyone in the community is vaccinated, we need to continue to wear our masks, keep our distance, and avoid crowds."

Q: Are there clinical trials taking place that would allow children younger than 16 to qualify for vaccine?

A: "I know for several of the vaccines, they are either enrolling some young people or actually have young people to see if this can be extended."

Q: Are children younger than 12 in any of the clinical trials to further reduce the age of people qualifying for vaccine?

A: "Not at this time. ... It will be some time before we see a younger group of kids."

Q: Does it appear that that everyone wanting a vaccine would not be eligible, or would not have access to available doses, until the second half of 2021 at the earliest?

A: "That's correct. It does depend on how many additional vaccines get the same emergency authorization from the (Food and Drug Administration)."

Q: Would most children have to be vaccinated before the state could reach herd immunity and life could become more normal and we wouldn't have to follow all of the current recommended mitigations?

A: "It is possible to get to a situation where we have this infection under control without seeing all people vaccinated. It depends on how things go with the (COVID-19) variants that we know about (and) if there will be significant changes that actually, potentially affect the efficacy of the vaccine. So there are a lot of things that have to continually be studied and researched to determine what our path is."

Contact Dean Olsen: dolsen@gannett.com; (217) 836-1068; twitter.com/DeanOlsenSJR.

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