When should Stanislaus County lift its COVID mask order? Other counties are waiting.
Stanislaus County leaders said a coronavirus mask order will come to an end on schedule when COVID-19 cases drop below 20 per 100,000 per day.
As some counties in the state consider whether to continue mask orders at lower disease transmission rates, no requests like that have surfaced in this county, said Vito Chiesa, board of supervisors chairman.
The county order mainly requires vaccinated people to wear a mask in indoor public places. When it is lifted, perhaps next week, state law will still require unvaccinated residents to wear a mask indoors in public. Face coverings also are required in buses, taxis, trains and airplanes, regardless of vaccination status.
With a daily case rate of 23.6 per 100,000 on Friday, Stanislaus County could reach the 20 per 100,000 threshold within the next week.
“Our public health officer has said when we get down to 20 (per 100,000), we should pull that mandate,” county Supervisor Terry Withrow said. “We are going to stick with that recommendation.”
Withrow said he didn’t hear feedback either for or against the county mask order after it went into effect Sept. 4. He said he appreciated the health order because it was based on conditions within the county and not based on pandemic conditions statewide.
Since the coronavirus was first detected here in March 2020, disease transmission has usually rebounded after state and local agencies have suspended infection disease measures for COVID-19.
Chiesa said he believes most people are now in the habit of wearing a mask and he doubted that ending the requirement for vaccinated folks will cause a spike in cases. He estimated that 10 percent of shoppers were without a mask during a recent visit to the grocery store.
Chiesa said the number of hospitalizations are coming down and the county public health officer is confident in lifting the order when the threshold is met. COVID admissions at the county’s five hospitals were at 124 on Friday, down from 181 Sept. 27, including 32 COVID patients in ICUs, according to the county’s online dashboard.
California’s decision to end most COVID restrictions in mid-June was followed by the delta variant surge starting in July, which pushed COVID hospital admissions to 314 by early September in Stanislaus County. Hospitals in the San Joaquin Valley became so full it triggered the state’s surge protocols for dealing with impacted intensive care units.
County health officials imposed the mask order, effective Sept. 4, as a less disruptive measure for slowing down the surge. It was less disruptive than imposing restrictions on businesses.
Counties representing about half of California’s population adopted indoor mask requirements over the summer.
“Haven’t we learned our lesson?”
Nurses reacted when the public health officers in Bay Area counties announced recently that indoor mask rules will soon be dropped based on moderate disease spread and vaccination coverage. The California Nurses Association is arguing that the Bay Area counties continue with mandatory masking.
The union cited the standard public health advice that masking is one of the layers of protection against COVID-19, along with vaccination, social distancing and hygiene.
“Haven’t we learned our lesson by now?” Cathy Kennedy, president of the California Nurses Association, said in a news release. “We cannot depend on criteria such as vaccination percentages and moderate transmission levels alone while dropping indoor masking and expect to control COVID-19. Masking has been scientifically proven to be an effective infection control measure that everyone can take to help keep cases down.”
The union noted that new cases are up 55 percent in Santa Cruz County since a face-covering order was dropped Sept. 29.
In Sacramento, the county health officer has said the mask order will likely end when the county drops to about five daily cases per 100,000, according the Sacramento Bee.
Stanislaus County has a below-average vaccination rate and, on Friday, its coronavirus death toll surpassed 1,300.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that communities carefully assess the need for COVID prevention measures until vaccination coverage is high and disease transmission is low. According to the CDC’s disease indicators, a countywide daily case rate of 20 per 100,000 is a moderate level of spread.
Health experts say that vaccinated people may still get infected with the coronavirus and are able to transmit the illness to others. They are far less likely than unvaccinated individuals to become sick and progress to a serious case of COVID-19.
The CDC and state health department have recommended masks for vaccinated people indoors in areas with high rates of COVID transmission.
This story was originally published October 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
