Another Bay Area county gears up to relax mask mandate



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Marin County health officials announced on Friday that the county will join San Francisco in relaxing the mandate of indoor masks in certain settings next week if local rates of COVID-19 transmission and hospitalization continue to decline .

From October 15, fully vaccinated people will be able to remove their masks indoors like gyms and offices if the following conditions are met, including the group size does not exceed 100 people, everyone is vaccinated, l The host maintains a list of everyone present, and access to the activity is controlled and not open to the general public, the county public health department said.

The revision of the county’s indoor mask ordinance – which still applies to all residents, regardless of vaccination status, in more crowded settings like grocery stores – would also include employee commuter vehicles, religious circles and university courses.

“We are not ready to lift the mandate at all levels, but we are in a good position to ease restrictions on the most secure parameters.” County public health official Dr Matt Willis said in a statement. “Science shows that when an entire group is vaccinated, the risk of infection is much lower.”

San Francisco announced Thursday that a similar change would be made to its mask tenure on Oct. 15 if cases and hospitalizations remain stable or decline.


The revised mandate comes in the wake of Marin and seven other counties – Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Sonoma and Napa – on Thursday announcing three criteria for which mask warrants can be fully lifted.

First, a county must meet the “moderate” (yellow) case rates as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracking data and stay there for three weeks. San Francisco is currently in the “substantial” level.

Second, the county health worker must determine that COVID-19-related hospitalizations are “low and stable.”

Finally, 80% of a county’s total population must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or eight weeks have passed since a COVID-19 vaccine was cleared for children aged 5 to 11. As of Thursday, 75% of the population of San Francisco was fully immunized.

San Francisco and Marin are the only counties to introduce the new rules for gatherings of people who meet regularly.

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