CDC removes holiday guidance suggesting ‘virtual’ celebrations from website

LOS ANGELES - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took down guidance from its website on safely celebrating the upcoming holiday season amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to a spokesperson. 

A link had originally sent people to a holiday celebration URL that contained detailed recommendations of how Americans should celebrate the upcoming holidays with their families. 

The link now goes to the CDC homepage. 

The original guidance by the CDC posted over the weekend suggested, among other considerations, that families hold virtual holiday celebrations or have socially distanced celebrations outdoors with neighbors and friends. 

The CDC also recommended the idea of using a window fan to keep the air at an indoor party as fresh as possible.

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"If celebrating indoors, bring in fresh air by opening windows and doors, if possible. You can use a window fan in one of the open windows to blow air out of the window. This will pull fresh air in through the other open windows," the CDC said. 

The agency told FOX TV Stations in an email on Tuesday that the guidance was "outdated."

"The guidance on that page was outdated holiday guidance. The page had a technical update on Friday, but doesn’t reflect the CDC’s guidance ahead of this upcoming holiday season," the spokesperson wrote. 

The retracted recommendations came after Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday sought to clarify remarks he made over the weekend that it was "too soon" for families to consider gathering in person to celebrate the upcoming holidays. 

Appearing on CNN, Fauci said the comments he made on CBS's "Face the Nation" were "taken completely out of context," and that he never intended to convey that people couldn't spend Christmas with their families.

On the Sunday show, when Fauci was asked about whether people should gather over the holidays by CBS anchor Margaret Brenna, Fauci said "it is just too soon to tell." 

"We have to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we’re going to do at a particular time," Fauci previously said. 

Fauci later told CNN that the comments were taken out of context. 

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"I also said something over the weekend that was taken completely out of context. I was asked what could we predict for this winter, for like December and Christmas," Fauci told CNN on Monday. "I said we don’t know because we’ve seen slopes that went down and then came back up."

"I will be spending Christmas with my family. I encourage people, particularly the vaccinated people, who are protected, to have a good, normal Christmas with your family," Fauci said. "The way all of the other disinformation goes around, you say something talking about a landmark of a time, and it gets misinterpreted that I’m saying you can’t spend family Christmas time, which is nonsense. You can."

Currently, the CDC is recommending that anyone who intends to travel at any time get vaccinated. For those who are not vaccinated, the CDC recommends wearing a face mask getting tested for COVID-19 up to a week before departing. 

"You do NOT need to get tested or self-quarantine if you are fully vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 in the past 3 months," the CDC says on its website.

FOX News contributed to this story.