Mask obligations reinstated in Los Angeles as coronavirus cases increase

Los Angeles — Residents of Los Angeles County are required to wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status. According to the University of California system, students, faculty and staff must be vaccinated against the coronavirus to return to campus.

Thursday’s announcement came amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, most of which have grown since California fully reopened its economy on June 15 and removed capacity limits and social distance. It is a highly infectious delta mutant. The majority of new cases are among unvaccinated people.

The rapid and sustained increase in cases in Los Angeles County requires reinstatement of indoor mask obligations, said Dr. Muntudavis, the county’s 10 million public health officer. Public health orders come into effect shortly before midnight on Saturday.

“This is every hands-on-deck moment,” Davis said at a virtual press conference.

He did not fully elaborate on what some exceptions to the mask rule are, but said, for example, that people can take off their masks while eating and drinking in a restaurant.

Davis said authorities will focus on education rather than enforcement. Distributing citations to non-compliant people “is not what we really want to do,” he said.

Over 1,000 new cases are recorded daily in Los Angeles County over the course of a week, and there are now “substantial community infections,” Davis said. There were 1,537 new cases on Thursday, and hospitalizations are currently over 400.

“The next level is high transmission, which is not where we want to be,” he said.

It was after winter that infections and deaths surged in Los Angeles County, hospitals were filled with COVID-19 patients, and ambulances were idling outside and waiting for beds to open.

Currently, there are over 1,700 hospitalizations in California, the highest level since April. More than 3,600 cases were reported on Thursday, the highest since late February, but far from the average daily peak of more than 40,000 winters.

Other counties, including Sacramento and Yoro, urge people to wear masks indoors, but they don’t need them.

“As with the number of people who choose not to be vaccinated, there are concerns about a dramatic increase in cases,” said Olivia Cassily, Sacramento County Public Health Officer.

The Los Angeles County decision was made within hours of the University of California’s announcement that students, faculty and staff would need to be vaccinated for the next semester.

In a letter to the system’s 10 prime ministers, UC Berkeley President Michael V. Drake said that unvaccinated students who have not been exempted include face-to-face classes, events, and housing. He said he would be locked out of the campus facilities.

“Vaccination is the most effective way to prevent serious illness and death after exposure to the virus and reduce the spread of illness to people who cannot or are not yet qualified,” Drake said. writing.

He said the decision was made after consulting with a UC infection expert and reviewing evidence from studies on the risk of new mutants such as COVID-19 and the Delta strain.

In San Francisco, cases are increasing among unvaccinated people. Blacks and Latins were fired at a lower rate than others, and the Mayor of London Breed urged them to be vaccinated.

She said Thursday that all people admitted to COVID-19 at San Francisco General Hospital were unvaccinated and most were African-American.

San Francisco supervisor Shaman Walton said, “We are not doing everything we can to protect each other, so the most cases occur mainly in the black neighborhood of the Bayview area. I’m doing it. ” This is a cry to my community. … you need to be vaccinated. “

San Francisco is one of the most populous states in the United States and has the highest overall immunization coverage. At least 83% of residents over the age of 12 receive at least one dose.

Meanwhile, north of San Francisco, at least 59 residents of homeless shelters tested positive for the virus. Dr. Sundari Mase, a Sonoma County health officer, said on Wednesday that 28 of the infected people in the Santa Rosa shelter had been completely vaccinated. Authorities were considering an additional 26 possible positive cases.

Of the patients confirmed to be infected at Samuel L. Jones Hall, nine were hospitalized, six of whom were fully vaccinated and suffered from “multiple serious” underlying illnesses such as diabetes and lung disease. The health official said it was.

Less than half of the 153 residents in the shelter were at least partially vaccinated, officials said, and they were outbreaks from vaccinated or unvaccinated residents. I don’t know if it started.

“We know that aggregate settings are at much higher risk,” Mase said. “We also know that the proportion of unvaccinated individuals in this situation is very high.”

Most of the 69 vaccinated residents had a single Johnson & Johnson vaccination, but Mase said it was difficult to determine if it was the cause of the outbreak. It was.

Vaccines reduce the severity of illness, reduce hospitalization, and reduce the risk of death. Clinical trials have shown that a single dose of the J & J vaccine is 72% effective against moderate to severe COVID-19 in the United States, compared to 95% of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

A Food and Drug Administration analysis warned that it was not clear how well the vaccine would work for each mutant.

So-called breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated people are rare. Between January 1st and June 30th, California identified 8699 such cases out of more than 20 million vaccinated people.

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Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez and Joselingecker of San Francisco contributed to this report.