All but one Bay Area county will be lifting the state’s indoor mask mandate starting next week. Health officers in 12 NorCal jurisdictions will allow vaccinated people to move about their lives mask-free starting next Wednesday, February 16th, according to a release by a coalition of health officers. San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Sonoma, Solano, Napa, Marin, San Benito, Santa Cruz, and Monterey Counties, along with the City of Berkeley will all align with the updated rules from Governor Gavin Newsom, announced on Monday. Under the state's guidance, masks can come off again broadly, in most public spaces, with the exception of hospitals, schools, taxis, and public transit.
“We can’t keep the mask mandate forever. I’m happy that it’s after the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day. It makes a lot of sense,” UCSF professor of epidemiology George Rutherford told San Jose Spotlight. Unvaccinated people in all those 11 counties will still be required to wear masks indoors — but will venues and restaurants all still be checking proof of vaccination a month from now?
For the most part, the Bay Area has taken a regional approach when dealing with coronavirus protocols, with counties working in concert to enact the same requirements, but this time around there is one lone holdout.
The Bay Area’s most populous county is deciding not to follow along with the state. Santa Clara County will still be ordering vaccinated people to wear masks in indoor public spaces for at least a few more weeks. The county’s public health director, Dr. Sara Cody says she is still worried about a large number of cases across the South Bay and the impact on area hospitals. She expects to re-evaluate the situation in a few weeks with the hope that cases will have eased.
“We must continue to base our decisions on the risks COVID-19 presents to our community, and we look forward to lifting the indoor mask requirement as soon as we can do so without putting vulnerable people at undue risk,” Cody told the SF Chronicle. Cody says Santa Clara County will be keeping an eye on two key benchmarks it needs to hit in order to safely allow people to ditch their masks: hospitalizations and the seven-day average of new cases per day. Right now, 418 people in Santa Clara County are still in the hospital battling COVID-19, which according to the Chronicle, is just slightly lower than the winter peak of Omicron on January 23rd when 533 people were hospitalized.
It could take several weeks for Santa Clara County to meet the other threshold needed for safe mask removal. The 7-day average of new daily cases should be below 550 but the county’s current average is 1,922. “Continuing to mask indoors should also allow our case rates to continue to drop quickly,” Cody told the Chronicle.
It may be wise for people to still carry a mask in the counties lifting the mask mandate. That’s because the new state order and the counties' order allow individual businesses to continue requiring masks if they choose — and you'll need a mask still if you get into an Uber or get on public transit.
