The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has released interim guidance for people fully vaccinated against COVID-19, allowing for the relaxation of social distancing and mask restrictions when mixing with unvaccinated people from another social bubble. 

In its report, the ECDC said coronavirus vaccines have proved highly effective in protecting against symptomatic and severe COVID-19 in real-life usage, adding that limited evidence also showed that fully vaccinated individuals were less likely to transmit the virus to their unvaccinated contacts.

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"The risk of developing severe COVID-19 disease for an unvaccinated individual who has been in contact with a fully vaccinated person exposed to SARS-CoV-2 infection is "very low" to "low" in younger adults and middle-aged adults with no risk factors for severe COVID-19," the ECDC reported in its advice to member states of the European Union.

It added that the risk becomes "moderate" in older adults or people with underlying risk factors, according to the evidence available so far. 

The agency said that given this assessment of the risk, restrictions can be lifted – such as physical distancing and the wearing of face masks – in certain situations, including when fully vaccinated people meet with unvaccinated younger adults and middle-aged adults from a different social bubble, so long as no one among the unvaccinated is at risk of severe disease if infected.

That means unvaccinated healthy adult children and grandchildren can meet fully vaccinated grandparents without masks or physical distancing.

But the ECDC also warned that the circulation of the virus in the EU remains high, while the vaccination uptake remains low across the bloc in the adult population aged 18 years and older, so precautions to reduce the risk of infection are still necessary. 

It added that the overall reduction in risk of severe COVID-19 is dependent on vaccine uptake and coverage in the general population, and is influenced by other factors including age, health conditions as well as variants of concern.

In its evaluation for the lifting of certain restrictions, the agency also said that testing and quarantine of travelers (if implemented in some countries) and regular testing at workplaces can be waived or modified for fully vaccinated individuals as long as there is no or very low-level circulation of variants in the country.

But it maintained that in the current situation in the EU, restrictions such as face coverings and social distancing measures should remain in public spaces and in large gatherings, including during travel, irrespective of the vaccination status. 

The ECDC remained optimistic about the reduction in population-level transmission of COVID-19 in countries such as the UK and Israel, which have implemented a slow and careful release of public health prevention measures while vaccinations are scaled up as quickly as possible.