Sacramento-area county to end indoor mask mandate, leaving no local orders in region
Yolo County will join Sacramento County in ending its local mask order next week, as both plan to align with California in dropping mask requirements for those fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in most public indoor settings.
The state plans to allow its health order requiring masks in indoor public places to expire after Feb. 15, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state health officials announced Monday. Those who are unvaccinated must still wear masks in those settings.
Sacramento and Yolo counties have each had their own, separate local mask orders in effect since July, when the previously dominant delta variant created a surge in infections. Each order requires people to wear masks in indoor public places regardless of vaccination status.
A Sacramento County spokesperson said Monday that the local health office plans to follow the state’s lead in ending mask requirements for the fully vaccinated next week, and officials on Wednesday announced Yolo County will do the same.
Masks remain mandatory regardless of vaccination status in several settings under the state health order: in health care settings, homeless shelters, prisons, long-term care facilities, on public transit and at K-12 campuses.
“Going forward, Yolo County will rely less on requirements in favor of public health recommendations,” the county said in a Wednesday news release. “The change comes after the recent surge of cases from the more contagious omicron variant greatly surpassed the prior peak of a year ago, yet Yolo County hospitals experienced fewer hospitalizations.”
State data confirm those trends: Yolo County peaked during the omicron surge at 27 patients in its hospitals, including nine in intensive care units, in late January.
Both were below the winter 2020 surge’s record of 33 patients including 18 in the ICU — even though the case rate in early January peaked at nearly 550 per 100,000 residents, more than triple the peak from winter 2020.
Yolo’s rate has since dropped to 70 per 100,000, according to the latest data from California Department of Public Health.
“Yolo County is lifting our masking order because the COVID-19 situation has changed thanks to effective vaccines, effective treatments, and a variant that causes less severe disease,” county health officer Dr. Aimee Sisson said in a prepared statement.
“The omicron wave is receding, but COVID-19 will continue to be with us. We must learn to live with COVID-19. Moving away from requiring everybody to wear masks indoors is a first step toward living with COVID-19.”
Sisson said she still recommends that everybody wears a mask indoors but that it won’t be required.
Neighboring Placer, El Dorado, Sutter and Yuba counties do not have local mask requirements, meaning none of the greater Sacramento area will be subject to a universal indoor mask order starting Feb. 16.
A handful of counties elsewhere in the state have indicated they will continue with universal mask requirements beyond Feb. 15, including Los Angeles and Santa Clara.
Yolo County, which has a population of 215,000, was one of the first in the state to implement a mask requirement in the early weeks of the pandemic, doing so in April 2020, nearly two months before California issued its first statewide mask order.
The county also has one of the state’s most aggressive testing networks, due largely to a partnership with UC Davis. According to CDPH data updated Wednesday, Yolo had the lowest test positivity rate of all 58 counties at 3.4%.
California’s original mask mandate ran from June 18, 2020, to June 15, 2021.
It returned six months later, on Dec. 15, in response to the highly contagious omicron variant. The temporary order was initially announced as a one-month measure, but was extended by an additional month as case rates continued to skyrocket through early January.
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 3:28 PM.
