DR ANTHONY Fauci has flip-flopped on masks once again, telling fully vaccinated people living in areas with low vaccination rates that they should still wear face coverings.

Fauci made the remarks during an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday after host Chuck Todd asked him if he'd wear a mask in a city such as Biloxi, Mississippi.

Mississippi has the lowest vaccination rate in the US, with only 34.3 percent of three million residents currently having recieved at least one dose.

"I think there would be a good reason to do that," Fauci said. "Because as we've said so often, that vaccines are not, even as good as they are and highly effective, nothing is 100 percent.

"And if you put yourself in an environment in which you have a high level of viral dynamics and a very low level of vaccine, you might want to go the extra step.

"I might want to go the extra mile to ensure that I get the extra added layer of protection, even though the vaccines themselves are highly effective," Fauci added.

Fauci's comments came just two days after the infectious disease expert said at a White House briefing that masks are not necessary for fully vaccinated people.

Fauci said at the time: "You have a broad recommendation for the country as a whole that, if you are vaccinated, you have a high degree of protection so you need not wear a mask indoor or outdoor.

"But also as it’s been said and as the CDC has recommended, there’s a degree of flexibility. People at the local level, depending on the on-ground situation, will make recommendations or not according to the local situation."

Fauci's remarks on Sunday are also at odds with comments made by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr Rochelle Walensky on June 30.

Walensky told the TODAY show that fully vaccinated Americans are “safe from the variants that are circulating here in the United States.”

Walensky also said that the CDC’s stance remains that fully vaccinated Americans are not obligated to wear masks, adding: “masking policies are not to protect the vaccinated, they’re to protect the unvaccinated.”

Fauci has a long-documented history of issuing conflicting advice about mask-wearing.

Emails published by Buzzfeed last month showed Fauci telling former Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell in February 2020 that “[t]he typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out the virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.”

He later U-turned on the matter, and mask mandates were put in place in numerous states by early spring.

In May of this year, Fauci told CBS that vaccinated Americans don’t need to wear masks outside.

“If you were going into a completely crowded situation where people are essentially falling all over each other, then you wear a mask,” he said.

“But any other time, if you’re vaccinated and you’re outside, put aside your mask. You don’t have to wear it.”

Around 1,000 counties across the US have vaccination rates below 30 percent – the majority of which are in the South and Midwest.

Data released by the Mayo Clinic shows that there are four states where fewer than 40 percent of the population has received one dose.

In addition to Mississippi, Louisiana, Idaho, and Wyoming have the lowest rates in the nation.

The data also shows that in 14 states, fewer than 40 percent of the population is considered fully vaccinated.

Health officials have warned that low-vaccination states and counties are in danger of suffering major outbreaks as the Delta variant of Covid-19, first discovered in India, spreads across the US.

Fauci said last week that Covid deaths are "avoidable and preventable" and pleaded for Americans to "put differences aside and get vaccinated."

In June nearly 100,000 people died in the US from the coronavirus.

Fauci told Meet the Press on Sunday: "

If you look at the number of deaths, about 99.2 percent of them are unvaccinated about 0.8 percent are vaccinated.

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“No vaccine is perfect, but when you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and deaths, it's really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.”

If you look at the number of deaths, about 99.2 percent of them are unvaccinated about 0.8 percent are vaccinated.

“No vaccine is perfect, but when you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and deaths, it's really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.”

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