Bay Area Health Officers: Mask Requirements To Ease When Case Rates, Hospitalizations Further Stabilize And Vaccinations Increase

Press release from City of Berkeley:

October 07, 2021

Berkeley, California (Thursday, October 07, 2021) - As decisions to vaccinate and mask indoors drive down COVID-19 case rates and hospitalizations, nine Bay Area Health Officers defined specific conditions for when they would lift Health Orders requiring face coverings in most indoor public spaces.

The eventual lifting of a local mask order would not prevent businesses, nonprofits, churches or others with public indoor spaces from imposing their own requirements. Face coverings remain highly powerful in limiting transmission of COVID-19, which spreads easily indoors through airborne droplets.

These Health Officers continue to work together across the Bay Area to protect public health with a consistent regional approach, and to plan for the next phase of response to COVID-19 as this wave of the pandemic ebbs.

The counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Sonoma and the City of Berkeley will remove indoor masking requirements in public spaces not subject to state and federal masking rules when the following three conditions are met:

• The jurisdiction reaches the moderate (yellow) COVID-19 transmission tier, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and remains there for at least three weeks; AND
• COVID-19 hospitalizations in the jurisdiction are low and stable, in the judgment of the health officer; AND
• 80% of the jurisdiction's total population is fully vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer or Moderna or one dose of Johnson & Johnson (booster doses not considered)OREight weeks have passed since a COVID-19 vaccine has been authorized for emergency use by federal and state authorities for 5- to 11-year-olds

This press release was produced by City of Berkeley. The views expressed here are the author’s own.