The state is considering removing the protocol at work if everyone is vaccinated.Regional news

“I’ve been optimistic for the first time in a while.” Dr. Sarah Cody, Santa Clara County Health Officer and Director of Public Health and the leading architect of the United States’ first stay-at-home order, told reporters. “For some time it seemed uncertain to me whether the vaccine or its variants would win, and I think the team vaccine is leading, holding the lead and winning.”

The California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Commission is expected to consider further steps to ease masking and physical distance requirements for vaccinated workers.

Among the proposed changes, the board will be heavier on Thursday morning. If everyone in the room is fully vaccinated and there are no symptoms of COVID-19, workers will no longer need to wear masks and all employees will be physically distanced where they are fully vaccinated. No need. ..

If the board approves the proposal, it will be submitted to the California Administrative Law Office, which will be reviewed within 10 days and a decision will be made on the proposed regulation.

The current California emergency workplace health and safety regulations, which came into force on November 30, indicate that workers are alone in the room, eating and drinking, but are more than 6 feet away from other workers. Unless you are, you should wear a mask indoors. The outside air supply has been maximized. Workers should also wear masks outdoors when they are less than 6 feet away from someone else.

Current rules generally require workers to be at least 6 feet apart.

The proposed changes are consistent with California’s existing mask rules for non-workplace settings that are already allowed. Fully vaccinated people gather in a room, such as a house, without a mask or physical distance.

The workplace safety proposal is more than the recent guidance issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week that provided recommendations that vaccinated people would no longer need to wear masks in almost any indoor or outdoor environment. Much more rigorous. The extraordinary effect of vaccines to protect against illness and infection.

Some infectious disease experts have suggested that the mitigation measures proposed in the California workplace can be further relaxed.

They pointed out that fully vaccinated people are highly protected from the coronavirus, even when in close contact with unvaccinated people.Even in rare cases If the vaccinated person is still infected anyway, they will be asymptomatic or very mild and unlikely to infect others with the virus.

“I feel they are going to be conservative,” said Dr. Robert Kim Farley, a medical epidemiology and infectious disease expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “As we go further out and more and more people are vaccinated and go to very low levels of illness circulating in the population, the board may review these recommendations. I think the sex is very high. “

Kim Farley relaxed more restrictions around June 15, when the state intends to fully reopen the economy, adapt to relaxed guidance on the CDC’s masks, and step forward. He said he would support California’s plans to move forward.

Importantly, people in California today are much less likely to get infected than they were during the heyday of the pandemic. California already has one of the lowest daily coronavirus case rates in the United States. As a result, Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, is not unmasked as a vaccinated person in a crowded crowd in high-case rates, Said he would feel. It’s okay to do so in San Francisco now.ry Currently, the spread of the virus is low.

In particular, British scientists have decided to undertake a rare experiment in Liverpool, supported by the country’s high immunization rates. There, thousands of people tested negative for the virus were allowed to attend crowded music festivals without masks or physical distances.

More than two weeks later, “they didn’t see a rise in the Liverpool incident,” Gandhi said.

Therefore, according to Gandhi, authorities need to consider how to change the rules when there are vaccinated and unvaccinated workers in the same room. According to Gandhi, a mask is obligatory if a certain percentage of the population receives at least one vaccination (such as 70%) and the number of cases of coronavirus per day drops to 2-3 per 100,000. I have an idea to withdraw. residents.

Approximately 51% of California residents have been vaccinated at least once, with a daily case rate of 3.6 coronavirus per 100,000 inhabitants in the state over the past week.

According to Gandhi, setting such benchmarks can alleviate public concerns that the movement is too fast to ease mask obligations. At some point, authorities need to “acknowledge that life can return to normal.”

Even the most cautious local public health authorities in California support an increasingly normal sensation, so potential movements by the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Commission may come.

“Fully vaccinated: you’re like an armor suit,” LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Supervisory Board. “If you are around many people who are completely vaccinated, unvaccinated and unmasked … you are very unlikely to get infected.”

More studies have shown that the COVID-19 vaccine is effective against mutants. And just this week, two of the state’s most populous counties, Orange and Santa Clara, join the least restrictive layer of California’s four-part, color-coded reopening roadmap, allowing for the widest possible opening so far. I made it.

Cody added:I am really pleased to understand that we have obtained evidence that vaccinated people are very unlikely to spread COVID. “

Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties, home to Silicon Valley and the first recorded COVID-19 deaths in the country, have recently tested positive rates of only 0.5%, compared to state-wide positive rates of 0.9%. Is even better. ..