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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Los Angeles County will once again require masks to be worn indoors in the nation’s largest county, even by those vaccinated against the coronavirus, while the University of California system also said Thursday that students, faculty and staff must be vaccinated against the disease to return to campuses.
The announcements come amid a surge in cases of the virus, many of which are the highly transmissible delta variant that has proliferated since California completely reopened its economy on June 15 and removed capacity limits and social distancing. The vast majority of new cases involve unvaccinated people.
The rapid and sustained increase in cases in Los Angeles County requires the reinstatement of an indoor mask warrant, said Dr Muntu Davis, public health official for the county’s 10 million people. The public health decree will come into force shortly before midnight on Saturday.
“It’s a time when all the players are on deck,” Davis said at a virtual press conference.
He did not fully detail what some exceptions to the mask rule would be, but said, for example, that people can still remove their masks while eating and drinking in restaurants.
Davis said officials will focus on education rather than enforcement. Giving quotes to people who don’t comply is “not something we really want to have to do,” he said.
Los Angeles County recorded more than 1,000 new cases every day for a week, and there is now “substantial community transmission,” Davis said. As of Thursday, there were 1,537 new cases and hospitalizations now exceed 400.
“The next level is high transmission, and it’s not a place we want to be,” he said.
It comes after a winter in which Los Angeles County has seen a massive increase in infections and deaths, with hospitals overloaded with COVID-19 patients and ambulances idling outside, waiting for beds to open.
Hospitalizations in California now exceed 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 which saw an average of more than 40,000 per day.
Other counties, including Sacramento and Yolo, strongly urge people to wear masks indoors but do not require it.
“The drastic increase in cases is concerning – as is the number of people who choose not to be vaccinated,” said Olivia Kasirye, public health official for Sacramento County.
The Los Angeles County decision came hours after the University of California announced that students, faculty and staff must be vaccinated for the upcoming semester.
UC President Michael V. Drake said in a letter to the 10 Chancellors of the System that unvaccinated students without approved exemptions would be barred from in-person classes, events and campus facilities, including housing. .
“Vaccination is by far the most effective way to prevent serious illness and death after exposure to the virus and to reduce the spread of the disease to those who are not able, or not yet eligible, to receive the vaccine.” , wrote Drake.
He said the decision came after consulting with infectious disease experts at UC and reviewing evidence from studies on the dangers of COVID-19 and emerging variants like the delta strain.
In San Francisco, cases are increasing among the unvaccinated. Blacks and Latinos are getting vaccinated at a lower rate than others, and the Mayor of London Breed has urged them to get the shot.
She said Thursday that everyone hospitalized with COVID-19 at San Francisco General Hospital is unvaccinated and most are African American.
San Francisco supervisor Shamann Walton said the most cases are in the Bayview district, a largely black neighborhood, “because we are not doing everything we can to protect each other. . It’s a cry to my community. … We need you to get vaccinated.
San Francisco has one of the highest overall vaccination rates in the nation’s most populous state. At least 83% of residents 12 years of age and older received at least one dose.
Meanwhile, north of San Francisco, at least 59 residents of a homeless shelter have tested positive for the virus. Of those infected at the Santa Rosa shelter, 28 have been fully vaccinated, Sonoma County health official Dr Sundari Mase said on Wednesday. Authorities were examining 26 other possible positive cases.
Of those infected confirmed at Samuel L. Jones Hall, nine were hospitalized, including six who were fully vaccinated and had “multiple and significant” underlying health conditions including diabetes and lung disease, officials said. of health.
Less than half of the 153 residents at the shelter had received at least one partial vaccination, officials said, and they are uncertain whether the outbreak started with a resident vaccinated or unvaccinated.
“We know that gathering places are much more at risk,” Mase said. “We also know that there is a very high proportion of unvaccinated people who were in this setting.”
Most of the 69 vaccinated residents had received the single dose of Johnson & Johnson, but Mase said it was difficult to determine if this was a factor in the outbreak.
Vaccines decrease the severity of illness, reduce hospitalizations and decrease the risk of death. Clinical trials have shown that a single dose of the J&J vaccine was 72% effective against moderate to severe COVID-19 in the United States, compared to 95% for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
A Food and Drug Administration analysis warned that it’s not clear how well vaccines work against each variant.
So-called breakthrough cases among the fully vaccinated are unusual. Between January 1 and June 30, California identified 8,699 such cases out of the more than 20 million people who received the vaccine.
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Associated Press writer Olga R. Rodriguez and Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco contributed to this report.
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