We study Polyakov loop as well as correlators of real and imaginary parts
of the Polyakov loop in 2+1 flavor QCD at finite temperature. We use hypercubic (HYP)
smearing to improve the signal in the lattice calculations and to obtain reliable results
for the correlators at large distances. From the large distance behavior of the correlators
we estimate the chromo-electric screening length to be $(0.38-0.44)/T$. Furthermore, we show that the short distance distortions due to HYP smearing do not affect the physics of interest.