White House Instructs Staff to State Wearing Masks Again

U.S.|The White House tells staff to start wearing masks again, as coronavirus cases rise in Washington, D.C.

• July 27, 2021, 5:42 p.m. ET

The White House is masking up again, just over two months after President Biden and senior government officials shed their face coverings in the biggest sign to date that the country was moving toward normalcy.

The shift came after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday that people vaccinated against the coronavirus should resume wearing masks in public indoor spaces in parts of the country where the virus is surging, amid growing reports of breakthrough infections of the more contagious Delta variant among people who are fully immunized.

An email to the White House staff with instructions to begin wearing masks again indoors arrived at 5 p.m. on the dot, an hour after the C.D.C. updated its county data online. The new data moved Washington, D.C., from yellow to orange, indicating that it has a “substantial” level of community transmission, senior officials said.

The city had a seven-day average of 52 cases per 100,000 residents as of Tuesday afternoon, a 148 percent increase from the average two weeks ago.

“As a result, the White House will require all individuals — regardless of vaccination status — to wear a mask at all times when on campus,” according to the email, which was obtained by The New York Times. The new policy begins on Wednesday morning.

The email said that masks could be removed only when “alone in an office with a door that closes, or when eating or drinking and maintaining at least 8-10 feet of distance.” The new guidance represents a return to the stringent masking rules that defined the early months of the Biden administration, when staff members were prohibited from gathering in large groups and conducted most of their meetings in offices with the doors closed, on Zoom.

The email also noted that “the vast majority of those working on campus are fully vaccinated.”

The White House Correspondents Association quickly followed the administration’s example, emailing reporters who cover the White House and work in the building that it was “reimposing its mask requirement for all indoor spaces at the White House.”

Earlier in the day, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, delivered the daily press briefing without a mask, and members of her staff sat in the room with their faces uncovered. The majority of journalists in the room also did not wear masks.

“We will be prepared to wear masks again,” Ms. Psaki said earlier in the day, when asked how new C.D.C. guidelines would affect the president and his staff.