LA residents will soon be covering their faces again when entering establishments as Los Angeles County is planning to reinstate its indoor mask mandate on July 29, according to The Gateway Pundit.
Los Angeles County will resume its indoor mask mandate if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid alert remains “High” for two weeks.
L.A. County public health director Barbara Ferrer on Thursday said, “Lots of folks are asking why we’re bothering and asking why don’t we just let things run their course like other places may have done.”
“I think it’s really hard… to look at the L.A. County data and not notice who continues to be hardest hit and not notice that we still have lots and lots of people with severe illness, lots of people who die and lots of people with long Covid, and not want to take a fairly straightforward step to try to layer in some additional protections,” she said.
Ferrer cleared that people should not be worried about the mandate.
“We are not closing anything down, we are not asking people to gather with the people they love, we are not asking you to forgo activities you love, we are asking you to take a sensible step.”
“When there’s this much transmission … put back on a well-fitting, high-filtration mask when you’re indoors around others. And I think that’s the prudent thing to do,” Ferrer said.
According to state data, there are now 1,153 Covid-positive patients in county hospitals, and 115 are in intensive care.
L.A. had 8,359 new cases on Saturday, the most since the January Omicron outbreak. The county’s average 7-day test positivity was 8.5% at the end of January, but it is now close to 15%.
The dominant BA.5 subvariant is also more transmissible than the original Omicron that caused the winter wave, Deadline reported.
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