Half of Californians urged to wear masks, even with vaccine

SACRAMENTO — Counties combining for more than half of California’s population are now at least strongly recommending all residents, including the fully vaccinated, wear masks in indoor public settings to help curb the spread of COVID-19, as infections and hospitalizations continue to spike throughout the state.

Seven Bay Area counties’ health offices on Friday urged the general public to mask up once again, regardless of vaccination status: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Sonoma, as well as the city of Berkeley.

Sacramento, Yolo and Fresno counties issued similar recommendations earlier this week, and Los Angeles County announced plans to strengthen its recommendation to a mandate starting this weekend.

Those 11 counties make up more than 20 million of California’s

39.5 million residents. Los Angeles is the nation’s largest county, with 10 million people.

The flurry of new advisories, most of them framed as recommendations at this time with the notable exception of Los Angeles’ incoming mandate, come as health officials express increasing levels of concern regarding the highly contagious Delta variant.

Sacramento, Fresno and Los Angeles made their announcements Thursday — exactly one month after California ended its statewide mask mandate for the fully vaccinated in most settings on June 15.

“On a statewide basis, our current Face Covering Guidance remains unchanged,” the California Department of Public Health wrote in an emailed response to The Sacramento Bee on Thursday. “CDPH supports local health departments, like Yolo and Los Angeles counties, making stricter policies based on the conditions in their community.”

COVID-19 activity statewide remains well below the height of the winter surge, but the numbers are escalating quickly, prompting concerns about another wave.

The state’s test positivity rate has grown from 0.7% to 3.7% since early June, CDPH reported Friday. The number of patients hospitalized with confirmed cases of the virus has jumped from about 1,100 to 1,800 in the past two weeks, state data show.

Sacramento County’s daily case rate has nearly tripled, from 3.8 to 11.2 per 100,000 residents as a rolling seven-day average, since June 20.

“While cases continue to surge and until vaccination rates have increased in Sacramento County, 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 wrote in a news release, citing restaurants and grocery stores as examples of those settings.

Delta is now the dominant variant in California. It made up at least 49% of samples from June that were tested for variants, skyrocketing from 6% in May and 2% in April. State health officials have yet to release percentages for cases from July.

Health officials say the vaccines in use are effective against the Delta variant, but are not 100% protection, and that the variant is driving up community transmission levels, especially in areas with poor vaccination rates.

CDPH said Friday that more than 20.7 million Californians are fully vaccinated, which is 52% of the state’s total population, and 61% of eligible residents ages 12 and up have been fully vaccinated.

That still leaves nearly 19 million Californians not yet fully vaccinated and at higher risk. Of those, about 16 million are unvaccinated, having not received a first dose.