San Francisco relaxes some indoor COVID mask rules

In a sign of improving COVID-19 conditions, San Francisco is expected to lift mask requirements in gyms and indoor offices next week – but only if everyone inside is vaccinated.

The move would make San Francisco the first slice of the Bay Area to significantly relax the indoor public face coverage requirements imposed in midsummer in response to the recent rise in the delta. If recent trends continue, it will not be the last.

As long as the number of newly confirmed infections and patients admitted to hospitals remains stable and low, San Francisco will lift indoor masking requirements on October 15, not only in offices and gyms, but also in wards. indoor classrooms, places of worship, employee commuter vehicles and other gatherings of people who meet regularly but do not exceed 100 people. Everyone inside these places should be vaccinated.

Employers or hosts should ensure that rooms are properly ventilated, that children under 12 and guests are not present, and that there has not been a recent outbreak of COVID-19 .

Berkeley and San Francisco are the only two Bay Area jurisdictions that require guests 12 and older in indoor restaurants, bars, and gyms show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Contra Costa County, the third most populous in the Bay Area, has ordered those customers to show either proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test result.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed – who was criticized last month for losing his mask at an indoor jazz nightclub, despite the Mask Order – called the move an “important step forward”, in particular for the city center.

“When I talk to office workers and business leaders, one of the things I keep hearing is that they are eager to get back to a more normal work routine where they can interact with their people. colleagues, ”she said in a statement. “Our economy is rebounding, the city feels like it is coming back to life, and this is yet another step in our recovery.”

Indoor mask requirements will remain in effect in more widely accessible environments, including stores, malls, and restaurants and bars, except for eating and drinking.

The San Francisco announcement comes on the same day that most Bay Area counties unveiled criteria they say must be met to widely lift mask requirements in indoor public spaces. But it could be months before counties meet these self-defined criteria.

Those jurisdictions – the counties of San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Sonoma – say they will withdraw the local indoor mask mandate when they have achieved all of the following goals:

• They have been in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “moderate” or yellow transmission level for at least three weeks;
• Local health worker determines COVID-19 hospitalizations are sufficiently stable and low;
• At least 80% of the total population is fully vaccinated, or eight weeks have passed since the injections were cleared for use in children aged 5 to 11 years.

No county in the Bay Area has met all of these thresholds. In fact, on Thursday, every county reporting data to the CDC in California was in one of the CDC’s two worst agency levels for assessing levels of coronavirus transmission: “substantial” or orange, and “high” or Red.

San Francisco estimates that 75% of residents of all ages are fully immunized; Santa Clara County, the most populous in the Bay Area, reports that 72% of all residents are fully immunized. In Contra Costa County, 71% of all residents are fully immunized.

Reaching the three thresholds to lift the indoor mask mandate may not be reached in Contra Costa County until the end of this year or early next year, officials said in a statement.

Bay Area counties can decide for themselves to lift mask warrants at different times, Dr Sara Cody, director of public health and Santa Clara County health official, said in a statement. briefing. This could lead to a scenario where one county might still need masks when its neighbors don’t.

“The most important thing is that we have relatively simple metrics that the audience can see, and that we can track them together,” Cody said.

Health officials have long said that reducing the coronavirus takes a multi-pronged approach. Actions like wearing masks in public, keeping physical distance, and immunizing can all reduce a person’s risk of infection – but they are most effective when used together.

“Basically we want to make sure we have multiple layers of prevention. We want to make sure the vaccination diaper is really sturdy before we remove the masking layer, ”Cody said.

Currently, children under 12 cannot be vaccinated. Pfizer has sought federal approval to use its COVID-19 vaccines in children aged 5 to 11, but it may take until Thanksgiving before these vaccines are authorized.

Much of the Bay Area has moved steadily in concert throughout the pandemic – adding and lifting restrictions together to present a united front against the coronavirus.

Masks were no exception. Health workers in most Bay Area counties jointly announced their existing mandates in early August, while the Delta variant was still raging in the region. (Solano County never reimplemented a mask mandate, and a county adjacent to the Bay Area, Santa Cruz, adopted a mask mandate weeks later than the rest of the Bay Area and lifted its command of mask last week.)

While other counties in the state have adopted similar rules, California as a whole never reimposed a universal indoor mask mandate in the last wave. While public health officials require unvaccinated residents to wear masks in indoor public places, they still recommend that vaccinated people do the same.

Bay Area officials said the path unveiled Thursday will bring clarity to the public and allow residents to easily track how close their county or city is to clearing any obstacles.

“The masks and vaccines together protected residents of Alameda County and the Bay Area during the summer wave,” Alameda County health officer Dr Nicholas Moss said in a statement. “As we expect COVID-19 and the flu to circulate this winter, with more people well protected against serious illnesses through vaccination, we can safely relax mask requirements. “

Relaxing local indoor mask requirements will not affect mask requirements imposed by state or federal governments. The state, for example, has ordered the use of indoor masks in K-12 schools, and the federal government has ordered the use of indoor masks on public transportation, such as planes, trains and buses and at airports.

Asked about the Bay Area announcement, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said, “We’re obviously looking at doing something similar.”

“I don’t know if this will mimic what is happening in Bay Area communities. They already have, for example, much higher vaccination rates overall than we do, ”she told reporters on Thursday. “And the demographics of their community are obviously different. “

Ferrer said 60% of LA County residents of all ages are fully vaccinated. According to the CDC, LA County has a higher degree of social vulnerability to natural disasters such as pandemics due to a number of factors, including poverty and overcrowded housing, compared to the Bay Area.

Los Angeles County was the first county in California to reinstate a mandatory indoor mask mandate. The move, ordered in mid-July, has been credited by experts with mitigating the effects of the Delta surge.

Ferrer said LA County’s approach to relaxing the mask requirement would likely be “linked to risk in some contexts.” So like I said before, if you have a lot of unvaccinated students, like we do in our elementary schools, this mask requirement is really the primary mode of protection. So I don’t see that going away in a school setting until we have more people who can be vaccinated. “

“We’ve been very honest from the start that one of the driving forces here will be to go back to lower transmission rates in the community,” Ferrer said.

Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Imperial are other counties in Southern California that have issued indoor mask warrants in response to the Delta’s summer outbreak.