Sacramento-area county returns to indoor mask mandate following update from CDC
Yolo County announced Tuesday that it will return to an indoor mask requirement, regardless of vaccination status, beginning this Friday — and it will stay in place until COVID-19 activity drops significantly.
Officials shared the new mandate hours after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance to say the fully vaccinated should wear masks in areas with surging COVID-19 cases, defined as at least 50 weekly cases per 100,000 residents (7.1 daily cases per 100,000).
The mandate will apply to indoor public spaces, such as grocery stores. It will be the same general restriction as had been in place in Yolo County between April 2020 and June 2021.
Yolo in a news release announcing the mandate noted the daily case rate has risen “eight-fold, from 1.2 to 10.0 per 100,000 residents” since the state dropped business restrictions and the mask requirement for the fully vaccinated. That growth has been largely fueled by the highly infectious delta variant.
The county says the mask mandate will remain in effect until the case rate falls below two per 100,000 for seven consecutive days.
“With case rates as high as they are and rising, everybody needs to add an additional layer of protection in the form of a mask when they are indoors,” Yolo County health officer Dr. Aimee Sisson said in a prepared statement.
“Vaccines are safe, effective, and free. But the vaccine alone may not be enough to prevent mild illness or infection, and that is why everybody will now be required to wear a mask indoors, regardless of their vaccination status.”
Yolo is the first county in the Sacramento region, and appears to be the second in California after Los Angeles, to return to a mask mandate since the state dropped its order for the fully vaccinated on June 15. Los Angeles did so July 17, before the new CDC guidance, in response to surging COVID-19 cases from the delta variant.
The California Department of Public Health as of 4 p.m. Tuesday had not updated its statewide mask guidance, though Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested during a news conference earlier in the day that an update would be coming in “very short order.”
Sacramento, El Dorado and Placer county officials in emailed responses to The Sacramento Bee said they would wait for further guidance from the state.
It’s not the first example during the pandemic of Yolo County either issuing stricter guidance or imposing restrictions more quickly than the state. The county introduced its first mask mandate in April 2020, almost two months before the state mask order before adjusting local mask policies.
The CDC previously in May had issued guidance saying the fully vaccinated did not need to wear masks in most indoor settings.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced the reversal in a news briefing Tuesday, saying the highly infectious nature of the delta variant, including instances of fully vaccinated individuals transmitting the virus to others, made the update necessary.
