Bay Area health officers Thursday laid out a list of conditions they say must be met before their region-wide requirement for everyone to wear face masks in indoor public places can end.
Those conditions include reaching the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s yellow “moderate” tier for COVID-19 transmission for at least three weeks, having low and stable hospitalization rates and either having 80% of the total population fully vaccinated or the shots authorized for kids age 5-11 for eight weeks.
The affected jurisdictions are Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Marin, Napa, Sonoma counties and the City of Berkeley.
Most of those Bay Area health departments issued the masking requirements for their respective jurisdictions on August 3, following a sharp rise in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths over the summer.
With that case surge now receding, and with the Bay Area having some of the highest vaccination rates in the country, the Bay Area health officers said it’s time to plan for lifting the mask order.
“Masks and vaccines together have protected residents of Alameda County and the Bay Area during the summer wave” said Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss. “While we expect COVID-19 and flu to circulate this winter, with more people well-protected from severe illness by vaccination we will be able to loosen mask requirements safely.”
California’s health guidance for the use of face coverings may remain in effect after local masking requirements are lifted, meaning that people who are not fully vaccinated for COVID-19 must continue to wear masks in businesses and indoor public spaces.
The state also requires face coverings for everyone, regardless of vaccination status, in health care facilities, public transit and adult and senior care facilities. California’s masking guidelines in K-12 schools would also not be affected by changes to local health orders.
Though the Bay Area has high vaccination levels, they’re still short of 80% of their total populations fully vaccinated. The total population fully vaccinated by county Thursday according to the CDC was 77% in Marin, 74% in Santa Clara and San Francisco, 72% in San Mateo, 70% in Alameda and Contra Costa and 67% in Sonoma and Napa.
An FDA advisory committee is scheduled to consider an application from Pfizer-BioNTech to grant emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds on October 26. If recommended by that committee and a similar one for the CDC, those agencies could authorize the vaccines for young children later this fall.
Lifting a local indoor mask mandate would not prevent businesses, nonprofits, churches or others with public indoor spaces from imposing their own requirements. As COVID-19 easily spreads through airborne droplets, face coverings remain highly powerful in preventing its spread.
The Bay Area counties’ approach differed from that of Santa Cruz County, which lifted its indoor mask mandate Sept. 28 based solely on reaching the CDC’s moderate COVID-19 transmission level, which is based on local case rates and the percentage of positive tests for the virus.
The same day Santa Cruz County lifted its mask requirement, the CDC bumped its transmission level back up to the orange “substantial” level. But county officials said they would not reimpose the order.
Medical experts at the University of California-San Francisco said Wednesday before the health officers made their announcement that they favored additional metrics based on hospitalization and vaccination rates.
“As a safety measure, along with vaccination, face coverings have been key to our success in the Bay Area in reducing transmission and protecting public health,” said San Mateo County Health Officer Dr. Scott Morrow. “As we look toward lifting the mandate, it’s vital for everyone who has not gotten vaccinated to consider getting vaccinated right away.”
