Santa Clara County On Track To Ease COVID Indoor Mask Mandate On March 2
SAN JOSE (CBS SF) -- Santa Clara health officials announced Thursday that for the first time the county has achieved all three benchmarks needed to finally join the rest of the Bay Area in easing the indoor COVID masking mandate for vaccinated residents.
At a noon news conference, County public health director Dr. Sara Cody told reporters that if the number of new cases remains at its current level or falls lower, she would recommend that the mask mandate be lifted on March 2.
Many have criticized Cody for not joining the health directors of the eight other Bay Area counties when they jointly announced ending the mask mandate in most indoor settings earlier this month.
State health officials also eased the mandate which still remains in place for all school children.
"In Santa Clara County, we committed to metrics last fall and remained committed to those metrics," she said. "As I said before, the idea is to insure that we have safety in place with high levels of vaccination, which we have, and that we have overall community transmission low enough to support removing this very important layer or at least removing the requirement."
"Now I want to note, it's important to know, that across the state masking is still required in certain settings," she continued. "It's still required in child care, K-8 (schools), shelters, jails, public transit and other riskier areas."
The three benchmarks Cody put in place were -- a high vaccination rate, a decline in the hospitalization rate and dip below an average of 550 new cases a day for week.
On Tuesday, new cases dropped to 501.
As of Thursday, 262 county residents were hospitalized with COVID, less than half of the 533 residents that were hospitalized at the peak of the county's winter surge in cases due to the omicron variant.
In addition, 84.7 percent of county residents are vaccinated.
"I just want to be very clear that the data that we are following looks very encouraging," she said. "We continue to see a downward trend in cases reported, continue to see a downward trend in our waste water surveillance."
""I know everyone looks forward to the day when we won't even need to wear masks anymore and when they aren't part of our life, at least for a little bit," she added.
As for her critics, Cody said keeping masking in place until now was an extension of the county's core values when it comes to public health.
"In the county, we are committed to our core values," she said. "One of our core values is health equity and that means that everyone gets as much as possible a chance to be healthy. And when you translate that to masks that means as a community we need to continue to mask to protect people who still are not protected because of age or illness or underlying conditions or geography or what have you."
Individual businesses are also encouraged to enforce their own masking policies as they see fit.
Cody said once the county lifts its indoor mask requirement, it will still recommend that residents wear them even if they are vaccinated and have received a booster dose.