Ending mask requirement - Covid origin questioned - Military sexual assault reform

The new recommendation, which carves out exceptions for buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters, will have significant implications for schools and businesses as the country begins to reopen. In announcing the decision, the CDC pointed to data from the last few weeks that show the vaccines work in the real world, stand up to the variants and make it unlikely vaccinated people can transmit the virus.
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The new recommendation is an about-face from guidance issued just 16 days earlier in which the CDC suggested masks should still be used indoors or in crowds even if people are fully immunized. It also comes after CDC Director Rochelle Walensky faced criticism for the CDC being too slow to provide a path back to normalcy for fully vaccinated people.
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Meanwhile, lawmakers, particularly moderate Republicans, had also increased political pressure on the CDC and the Biden administration in recent days to further update their guidelines as an incentive for people to trust that life will get better as more people get vaccinated.