US Surgeon-General Vivek Murthy stood by federal guidance that those fully vaccinated against coronavirus (Covid-19) no longer needed to wear masks, while blaming social media companies for fuelling vaccine misinformation.
He told CNN’s State of the Union that allowing vaccinated individuals to forgo masks also gives communities the flexibility to revert to mask mandates based on new infections and vaccination rates, as Los Angeles has done.
Nationwide, new US Covid-19 cases surged 70% this week compared with the prior seven days to an average of 30,000 new infections a day, fuelled by the highly-infectious Delta variant, first detected in India.
Deaths rose 26% week-over-week to an average of 250 lives lost a day, mostly in unvaccinated patients.
Murthy, who as surgeon-general is a top government spokesman on public health matters, appeared on several news programmes just hours after a new indoor mask mandate took effect in Los Angeles.
No other US city has returned to an indoor mask mandate, but Murthy said he expected others to follow amid a surge in the Delta variant of the virus.
“In areas where there are low numbers of vaccinated people, or where cases are rising, it’s very reasonable for counties to take more mitigation measures like the mask rules you see coming out in LA, and I anticipate that will happen in other parts of the country,” Murthy told ABC’s This Week.
He also said that social media companies have fuelled false narratives about the safety and effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines, echoing President Joe Biden’s comments that social media companies were “killing people”.
“There have been positive steps taken by these technology companies,” the top health official said. “But what I’ve also said to them publicly and privately is that it’s not enough.”
Facebook defended itself against Biden’s assertion in a post on Saturday, saying that it promoted authoritative information about vaccines and acted aggressively against health misinformation on its platforms.
“The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against Covid-19,” Facebook said in a corporate blog post by Guy Rosen, a company vice-president. “President Biden’s goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.”
Covid-19 misinformation has spread during the pandemic on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Incorporated-owned YouTube.
Democratic Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union that she is looking into ways to hold social companies legally responsible for vaccine misinformation and suggested some might even need to be broken up.
“I am a fan of using anti-trust so we can get true competition against the dominant platforms,” she said.
Ken McClure, the mayor of Springfield, Missouri, blamed misinformation as part of the driving force behind poor vaccination rates in his community which has experienced a huge spike in Covid-19 cases.
“I think we’re seeing a lot spread through social media,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation. “I think we as a society and certainly in our community are being hurt by it.”
Los Angeles has also seen a sharp surge in Covid-19 cases.
“In the last few days, we’re up to almost 1,900 cases, and over 460 individuals that are now in our (intensive-care) units,” Hilda Solis, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, told ABC. “This is very disturbing, and of course, as responsible elected officials, we have to do something.” 
Persistent vaccine scepticism – driven by misinformation – has fuelled the rise in many areas, even as health officials work to reassure the public of the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.
Ninety-seven per cent of those hospitalised in June were unvaccinated, according to Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Just 48% of Americans are fully vaccinated; the figure is 68% among those 18 and older.
The combination of the surging Delta variant and the lag in vaccinations has left Surgeon-General Murthy feeling “deeply concerned” about prospects for the fall, as more people return to work and unvaccinated children return to school.
“What I worry about,” he said, “is that we still have millions of people in our country who are not vaccinated. We have to still protect our children under 12 who don’t have a vaccine.”