Sacramento-area county recommends masks for fully vaccinated as COVID Delta variant spreads
Yolo County issued an advisory Wednesday strongly recommending that residents wear masks in most public indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status, citing a recent increase in COVID-19 activity attributed to the highly transmissible Delta variant.
“Vaccinated residents are strongly recommended to wear masks in indoor settings where vaccination verification is not required and the vaccination status of others is unknown,” the county said. “Unvaccinated individuals are still required to wear masks in indoor public spaces.”
The county also “strongly recommended” that those who are 65 or older wear masks in those indoor settings, even if fully vaccinated.
Yolo is the first county in the Sacramento region to issue such a recommendation since California significantly relaxed mask rules for the fully vaccinated on June 15, in line with federal guidance updated a few weeks earlier by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Los Angeles County made a similar recommendation in late June.
The Sacramento County health office “is in discussions about this issue,” county health spokeswoman Laurie Slothower wrote in an emailed response to The Sacramento Bee.
Slothower said the county would provide more information Thursday.
Both the Yolo and Los Angeles advisories are recommendations, and are not mandatory.
“I am erring on the side of caution to slow the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant,” Yolo County health officer Dr. Aimee Sisson said in a prepared statement. “Vaccines remain the absolute best form of protection against COVID-19, and I implore everyone who is eligible to get fully vaccinated as soon as possible.”
Yolo’s announcement said the UC Davis Genome Center has identified 59 cases of the Delta variant since mid-April, and that it made up 76% of positive samples collected between June 27 and July 7 at the UC Davis campus and through the “Healthy Yolo Together” testing initiative.
The state health department in an update last week reported the variant made up 43% of June cases tested for variants to date, but that percentage is expected to grow as labs continue to sequence data from later in the month. Delta has already overtaken Alpha (B.1.1.7) as the dominant variant spreading in the state.
Health officials have said full vaccination appears to remain largely effective against the Delta variant, but experts are still studying whether there may be some level of reduced efficacy.
“We know that our vaccines, while highly effective, aren’t perfect,” Sisson’s statement continued. “Putting on a mask indoors in settings where you can’t be sure that everyone who is unmasked is fully vaccinated is a simple way to add another layer of protection against COVID-19.”
About 52% of Yolo County residents are fully vaccinated, about the same as California’s statewide rate and a few percentage points higher than neighboring Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Sutter and Yuba counties.
Yolo was the first county in the region and one of the first statewide to institute a mandatory mask order last year, doing so that April, nearly two months before California health officials required masking in most shared public settings in June 2020.
This story was originally published July 14, 2021 at 10:06 AM.
