California will continue its requirement that the fully vaccinated wear masks in most indoor settings outside the home including public transportation until June 15, declining to immediately implement looser guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

California officials have said they plan to remove the state’s color coded tiered restrictions on businesses and personal gatherings and activities on June 15.

“Until June 15, California will keep our existing guidance around masks in place,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said Monday.

“On June 15, California will follow the CDC guidelines,” Ghaly said. “This four-week period will give Californians time to prepare for this change while we continue our relentless focus on delivering vaccines. We continue to urge from the mountaintops that all Californians to get vaccinated and that we can all return to those activities we love and have been missing for so long.”

The CDC said Thursday that those fully vaccinated against COVID-19 no longer need to wear masks outdoors or even most indoor settings, a major revision of earlier, stricter guidance that had been criticized as overly cautious. The fully vaccinated are those who are two weeks past their last required COVID-19 vaccine dose.

The CDC just two weeks earlier had recommended fully vaccinated people continue to wear masks indoors in all settings and while outdoors in large crowds.

Price & Product Availability Tracker

Discover where products are available & compare prices

California’s rules as of May 3 largely aligned with that earlier CDC guidance, stating that face coverings are not required for fully vaccinated people outdoors except when attending crowded events such as live performances, parades, fairs, festivals, sports events or other similar settings. But those rules maintained that face coverings are required for indoor settings outside of people’s homes, including public transportation, regardless of vaccination status.

Bay Area county health officials said Thursday they were awaiting updates from the state.

Nationally, Texas and at least a dozen other states have allowed statewide mask mandates to expire. A growing number of states — including Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington — have indicated they will follow the CDC’s new guidance. New York state said Monday it will follow the CDC’s new mask guidance for fully vaccinated people starting Wednesday.

Health experts like Dr. Monica Gandhi a the University of California-San Francisco cheered the CDC’s revision last week, arguing the earlier guidance requiring the vaccinated to continue masking and social distancing in many settings conflicted with recent science and contributed to vaccine hesitancy. Why would someone want to get vaccinated if it doesn’t offer any evident freedom from worry and burdensome rules?

But others have urged caution, noting that pre-adolescent children still cannot get vaccinated and remain vulnerable to getting and spreading infection, even if the disease is less severe among them, and vaccination rates remain too low to provide “herd immunity.”

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky defended the agency’s mask guidance update over the weekend, arguing it is based on the latest science showing that vaccines are effective against circulating variants of the coronavirus and that they block its transmission.

But Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said Monday on Twitter that delaying the lifting of mask mandates another month would be beneficial, as more will be fully vaccinated by mid-June.

“Lifting mask mandates now means those folks will be indoors with unvaccinated, unmasked folks which is risky,” Jha tweeted.

Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the UCSF medical department, agreed Monday.