Health officers in seven Bay Area counties Monday toughened their indoor mask recommendation into an order — again — to tamp down sharply rising infections driven by the highly contagious COVID-19 delta variant.
The new health orders require everyone regardless of vaccination status to wear face coverings in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties when indoors in public settings, with limited exceptions, starting Tuesday. The requirement ends a seven-week respite from ubiquitous mask mandates that had been relaxed when the state shed most of its coronavirus restrictions on businesses and social gatherings. Louisiana issued a similar statewide order Monday.
“It is unfortunate that we have to do this at this point in the pandemic,” said Dr. George Han, Santa Clara County deputy health officer. “None of us wanted to be here. But the virus has changed. We are actually in broad agreement that everyone should be masking when they are indoors. It will find a way to get you.”
Q&A: Here’s what you need to know about the Bay Area’s new mask order
The mandate comes after weeks of growing concern over the delta variant and case counts in the Bay Area that have topped the peaks of last summer’s surge despite the region’s high vaccination rates, with more than 8,200 new cases in the last week — a 32% increase from the week before. Though most of those infections are among unvaccinated people, a growing fraction are among the immunized, particularly older and sicker people.
Indoor settings are higher risk for COVID-19 transmission, especially when you are with people you do not live with, the health officers warned. They recommended well-fitting cloth or surgical masks and N95 respirators and discouraged use of thin neck gaiters.
While business owners will be required to implement the new mask order across the region, health officials said the orders will vary some by county.
In Santa Clara County, which has taken a far stricter stance on COVID rules than other counties, Han said businesses will be required to post signs and enforce the mask mandate and said that members of the public can lodge complaints about violators online through the county’s website. Santa Clara County Counsel James Williams said enforcement would be complaint-based.
“If people have concerns, our complaint portal is still live and available, and our enforcement team will follow up on those as we have during the pandemic,” Williams said.
In recent days, the greater Bay Area has seen a number of COVID-19 clusters, including at a concert hall in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a school district in the East Bay city of Brentwood that just returned to classes, and among staff at Bay Area hospitals.
The health officers said the order doesn’t mean a renewed shutdown of bars and indoor dining. Customers should wear masks when they come inside and remove them to eat or drink.
Seth Wright, 28, who works as a manager of Verve Coffee Roasters’ Palo Alto location, where about half of the customers and most of its servers and baristas were unmasked Monday, said he is OK with the new order. Starting tomorrow, customers without masks will be asked to order online and wait outside, and those who come in but refuse to wear one won’t be served.
“As a manager of a business of this stature, it’s a little difficult to have to remind guests constantly of all ages to mask up,” said Wright, who is fully vaccinated and was wearing a mask. “At the same time we want everyone to be comfortable. It’s a county mandate, it’s not our choice, it’s the government’s choice.”
Not everyone agrees.
“If we had a massive increase in deaths because our area was unvaccinated, I could see the wisdom in imposing restrictions there,” said Karl Schneider, a 26-year-old from Michigan who works at Stanford. “But because the level of death is so low in the Bay Area, I don’t really see the wisdom of reimposing mask mandates.”
The Bay Area health officers said they toughened their mask order after new research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus as easily as the unvaccinated. That research prompted the CDC last week to again advise masks for everyone indoors in places such as the Bay Area where COVID-19 transmission is at levels defined as “substantial” or “high.”
The CDC in mid-May had revised earlier guidance to allow fully vaccinated people to go without masks either outdoors or indoors in most public places, hoping to spur vaccinations with some reward for the immunized. Masks are still required for all in public transit, school buildings and health, shelter or correctional facilities. California adopted those rules June 15 when it retired most pandemic restrictions.
But with COVID-19 cases rising fast, Los Angeles County on July 15 ordered that masks be worn by everyone indoors in public. Several other counties across the state including in the Bay Area recommended masks indoors for everyone but stopped short of mandates.
Shortly after the CDC revised its guidance last week, California did so as well and now recommends but does not mandate face masks indoors statewide regardless of vaccination.
The Bay Area health officers said the order is indefinite and that any easing would likely be based on hospitalization rates, which have increased alarmingly. Contra Costa County, for example, now has 147 hospitalized with COVID-19, including 31 in intensive care, up from 25 hospitalized, 10 of them in intensive care, on June 15.
“If we can get hospitalization rates down to where we were in mid-June, then we can start to think about easing off some these restrictions,” Contra Costa County Health Officer Dr. Chris Farnitano said.
Farnitano said that although most of those hospitalized are unvaccinated, older and sicker people who have had the shots are also ending up in the hospital and intensive care unit because the virus is so rampant. Either way, it’s an ugly sight.
“They’re gasping for air. If they’re in the ICU they have a tube down their throat,” Farnitano said. “I wouldn’t want to wish a COVID hospitalization on anyone. It’s a terrible experience.”
