On Thursday, Los Angeles County’s COVID-19 levels went from “medium” to “high”, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s standards.
This uptick means the county will face a mask mandate if the COVID-19 levels remain “high” for two weeks consecutively.
If the COVID-19 rates continue at this pace, on July 29th, the indoor mask mandate will automatically be triggered “to help slow the rate of transmission and protect those most vulnerable,” the County’s Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.
The COVID-19 levels reached the “high” definition after the county began to record over 10 daily COVID-positive patients for every 100,000 residents.
Ferrer admitted that a renewed mask mandate may be a frustrating reality.
“I do recognize that when we return to universal indoor masking to reduce high spread, for many this will feel like a step backwards.”
However, she added that county-wide masking “makes a lot of sense because it helps us to reduce risk.”
Ferrer claimed the county, which contains over 9.8 million residents, was expecting to have more cases reported in the near future.
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“It’s unlikely that we’re at the peak of this recent surge given the increased circulation of new subvariants of concern, and we already have an average of over 6,400 cases being reported per day,” Ferrer said.
Masks are currently required, and have been for months, throughout all forms of public transportation and in hospitals, medical clinics, and most schools.
LA County is planning to instate an indoor masking mandate on July 29. It would apply to all public indoor spaces: pic.twitter.com/8QHgVZropO
— Soumya (@skarlamangla) July 14, 2022
Social media users bashed L.A. County officials over Ferrer’s warning.
Republican operative Kyle Lamb questioned the County’s reasoning behind the two-week warning.
“Mandates would return with 2 consecutive weeks of “high” transmission. If masks work so well, why wait until meeting a subjective, arbitrary and unscientific threshold? There is absolutely no science behind any of this lol,” Lamb commented on Twitter.
Another Twitter user speculated more mandated masking will hurt LA children’s early development skills.
“If the mask tyranny continues in LA county, this will be the third year of forcing young learners to wear masks multiple hours a day. We already know the consequences of learning loss. End the mask mandate madness,” Sacha Nicoletti said.
Stay tuned to National File for any updates.
