California extends face mask mandate amid record COVID cases

Californians will have to keep wearing face masks indoors past Valentine’s Day regardless of vaccination, the state’s top health official said Wednesday as COVID-19 cases reached a new record fueled by the fast-spreading omicron variant.

Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said the face mask mandate will be extended a month to Feb. 15 and reevaluated then.

“Omicron is here, and it’s here now and we can’t abandon the tools we’ve used to achieve our collective success that have allowed California to be one of the safest states in the pandemic,” Ghaly said.

California’s 7-day average of new daily cases has nearly doubled since Friday to 54,695, a new record high. Citing the surge, organizers of the Grammy Awards, scheduled to take place at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles later this month, postponed the event Wednesday, but Ghaly said the Super Bowl is still scheduled to be played in Los Angeles on Feb. 13.

Health officials are working with the National Football League, he said, “to make sure people can enjoy this important event” while ensuring measures are in place to avoid spreading the virus.

COVID-19 infections are spreading like wildfire across the country as well, topping an average of nearly 550,000 new cases a day, with omicron now accounting for about 95% of cases, according to the CDC.

“We’re asking everyone to follow these four steps: Get vaccinated and get boosted if you are eligible, wear a mask, stay home when you’re sick, and take a test if you have symptoms or are looking for greater, extra reassurance before you gather with others,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday.

In the first year of the pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a statewide requirement for everyone to wear face coverings in indoor public settings in June 2020, and didn’t lift it until June 15 of 2021. That was a month after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said the vaccinated no longer needed to mask up in most indoor public settings, with the exception of public transit, schools, shelters, prisons and jails and health care facilities.

Several Bay Area counties in October reinstated the requirement, citing rising cases and concerns about worsening outbreaks over the winter, including breakthrough cases as immunity from vaccines and previous infections waned.

California officials last month reinstated the statewide mask requirement for everyone down to age 2 regardless of vaccination status in all indoor public settings. The requirement began Dec. 15 and was to run through Jan. 15 before Wednesday’s extension.

But lengthening the mask requirement was the only new restriction Ghaly said was being imposed despite a frighteningly sharp rise in COVID cases and hospitalizations that have put a strain on the state’s health care system and left many schools battling massive staff shortages and student absences due to illness.

The state isn’t calling for new lockdowns, school closures or other restrictions on business activity or gatherings, as were in place last winter’s deadly surge of COVID-19 cases, Ghaly said.

Despite the alarming case surge, California is in many ways in much better shape than it was a year ago, when vaccines were just rolling out and few in the state beyond health care workers and nursing home residents had received the shots.

Now, two thirds of all Californians and more than 70% of those ages 5 and older eligible for the shots have been fully vaccinated, and a third of the state’s residents have had a booster, according to the CDC.

And despite shortages and long waits in many areas, Ghaly said testing for the virus — whether the highly accurate PCR molecular tests performed by laboratories or the at-home antigen tests — is widely available.

“At the moment, we’re really happy to have an expanded toolkit and we’re not discussing business closures or further restrictions on businesses or other sectors of our economy,” Ghaly said.

Ghaly said there is no single metric the state will use to determine by Feb. 15 whether to lift the mask order, but that the decision would be based on assessments of case rates, hospitalizations and other factors that affect health care delivery.

And Ghaly said that although the state encourages use of tight-fitting N95 respirator-type masks over those made of cloth, it won’t be requiring them for anyone, including school kids. Ghaly said there were concerns about whether all families have access to those more expensive masks.

The CDC this week shortened the booster shot eligibility period for those who had the Pfizer vaccine from six to five months, and Wednesday recommended the third shot for adolescents as young as 12, following review by its vaccine advisory panel and FDA’s approval.

Adolescent boosters have been resisted by health experts across the country and several of the CDC advisory panel members who questioned whether the modest benefits for an age group unlikely to suffer severe COVID-19 are worth the risks and distraction from vaccinating those who haven’t had the shots. But panel members said children would benefit from less chance of missing school if they get sick.