SAN JOSE, Calif. – Seven Bay Area counties and the city of Berkeley on Friday issued a recommendation, but not an order, for everyone to wear masks indoors again, whether they are vaccinated or not, as a precaution against the increased prevalence of COVID-19, as well as the delta variant.
“Out of an abundance of caution, people are recommended to wear masks indoors in settings like grocery or retail stores, theaters, and family entertainment centers, even if they are fully vaccinated as an added layer of protection for unvaccinated residents,” the health officials wrote.
This week alone, Contra Costa County’s reported new cases are averaging 93 per day and the daily case rate is now 5.7 per 100,000 and rising, the joint news release from most of the Bay Area health departments said. And in June, the delta variants comprised 43 percent of all specimens sequenced in California.
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Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Sonoma counties and Berkeley issued the mask recommendation. Only Napa and Solano counties did not join.
The Bay Area recommendations come one day after Los Angeles County ordered its residents to again be required to wear masks indoors, regardless of their vaccination status, while the University of California system said that students, faculty and staff must be inoculated against the coronavirus to return to campuses.
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Exactly one month after California dropped its mask mandate, Los Angeles County officials have reversed course and are now requiring masks for everyone when indoors. KTVU’s Azenith Smith reports.
Vaccines are still the best antidote to the virus, the health officials said. But they noted that many people statewide and in the country are still not vaccinated. The vast majority of those hospitalized because of the disease have not been vaccinated.
In addition to regular residents, the Bay Area health officials said that businesses are urged to adopt universal masking requirements for customers entering indoor areas of their businesses to provide better protection to their employees and customers.
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Bay Area health officers said they will revisit this recommendation in the coming weeks as they continue to monitor transmission rates, hospitalizations, deaths, and increasing vaccination rates throughout the region.
Other counties, including Sacramento and Yolo, are also strongly urging people to wear masks indoors but not requiring it. Even outside California, in Las Vegas, health officers also recommended masking indoors.
The announcements come amid a spike in COVID-19 cases, most of them the highly transmissible delta variant that has proliferated since California fully reopened its economy on June 15 and did away with capacity limits and social distancing. The vast majority of new cases are among unvaccinated people.
At this point, hospitalizations in California are above 1,700, the highest level since April. More than 3,600 cases were reported Thursday, the most since late February, but a far cry from the winter peak that saw an average of more than 40,000 per day.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.