What life will look like in the Bay Area after the coronavirus crisis is becoming clearer day by day, and masks or face coverings in public settings are going to be “an important part of the new normal,” Marin County health officer Dr. Matt Willis said.
Marin County and “other,” unspecified counties in the region will announce orders Friday requiring face coverings to be worn anywhere “we are coming into contact with people within six feet who we don’t live with, particularly indoors,” Willis said in a video announcement Thursday night.
The order will go into effect Wednesday at noon, and children under the age of 6 are exempt. Willis did not say how or if counties plan to enforce the order.
“If this just feel like another order, it’s important to realize that this actually enables us to lift more restrictive orders,” Willis said, before strapping on a mask of his own and thanking Marin residents for flattening the curve in the county over the past month.
This is one step toward reopening the region. Because of asymptomatic carriers of the virus, which has an incubation period of 2-14 days, symptoms alone aren’t enough to identify everybody who is contagious. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as local health officials, have said any facial covering is enough to prevent the spread of the droplets that carry the virus.
Until Friday, only two jurisdictions in the Bay Area had gone so far as to make it an order. Sonoma County on Monday announced a similar order that took effect Friday. On Thursday, the city of Fremont began requiring customers and employees inside any essential business to cover their faces.
None of the local orders requires medical-grade masks, only a face covering of some variety, like a bandana or homemade mask. Willis, who himself has been infected by the virus and recovered, said the order “amplifies the existing recommendation” from all local officials and the CDC.
Although Willis did not specify which counties would be joining Marin and Sonoma, he said the decision to proceed with modified shelter-in-place orders after the existing ones expire May 3 was made by all the public health officers who authored the original, which was put into effect March 16. Those counties included San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin.
An official announcement with more details was expected Friday.
