What to know in the San Francisco Bay Area

While the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says fully vaccinated people can generally forgo masks, public health departments in seven Bay Area counties and one city issued an advisory on Friday recommending that all people, regardless of their vaccination status, wear masks in indoor public spaces. .

Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Sonoma and the City of Berkeley have issued a joint statement saying that out of caution they recommend masks indoors in environments such as grocery stores or stores. retail, theaters and family entertainment centers – even if individuals are fully vaccinated – as an added layer of protection for unvaccinated residents.

The advisory is a recommendation, not a requirement, and is effective immediately.

“We ask our residents to come together again in this effort to stem the increase in cases until we can assess the impact on our hospital capacity,” said Dr Susan Philip, head of health at San Francisco.

The only two counties in the Bay Area not to release the joint statement were Napa and Solano counties.

Businesses in the Seven Counties and Berkeley are also urged to adopt universal masking requirements for customers entering interior shopping areas to provide better protection for their employees and customers.

The news comes after Sacramento and Yolo counties issued similar voluntary rules earlier this week. Los Angeles County reinstated a mandatory mask requirement for public indoor spaces on Saturday at midnight.

The delta variant of the coronavirus accounted for 43% of all COVID-19 specimens sequenced in California as of June, the statement said. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the delta variant is responsible for 58% of new infections across the country.

Preliminary research shows that vaccines effectively protect against the delta variant.

Marin County Health Director Dr Matt Willis explained on a phone call on Friday that a mask recommendation is helping prevent the spread as groundbreaking cases – where people vaccinated – still occur. While vaccinated people who are infected are most often asymptomatic and have mild cases, they can still pass the virus to unvaccinated people, who can develop serious illness.

“Breakthroughs are more common than initially thought for the Delta variant,” Willis said.

Willis noted that one in three new cases in Marin County is a breakthrough infection where a fully vaccinated individual is positive.

“We are not seeing corresponding increases in hospitalizations or deaths,” Willis said. “As we see an increase in the proportion of our cases that are breakthrough cases, vaccine protection is clear in preventing serious illness. This is what interests us most in the first place.