Health Officer Praises Gilroy Residents For COVID Compliance

GILROY, CA — Santa Clara County Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody praised Gilroy and Santa Clara County residents for largely being accepting of COVID-19 prevention measures that she instated, as the county and region may soon get a reprieve from mask mandates.

Health officers in eight Bay Area counties and the city of Berkeley outlined the criteria in a joint statement Thursday to lift those health orders.

Cody said that public compliance led to a fairly tame fourth surge.

"We have had a fourth surge but it has been relatively blunted compared to the experience of other parts of the state and country," she said at a news briefing Thursday.

The indoor mask requirement in public spaces will be lifted when ALL the following occur.

1. The jurisdiction reaches the moderate (yellow) COVID-19 transmission tier, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and remains there for at least three weeks.
2. COVID-19 hospitalizations in the jurisdiction are low and stable, in the judgment of the health officer.
3. One of the following applies:

• Some 80 percent of the jurisdiction's total population is fully vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccines. (Booster shots are not considered.)
• Eight weeks have passed since a COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for emergency use by federal and state authorities for 5- to 11-year-olds.

Currently, Santa Clara County is in the orange tier, one tier above yellow.

Cody said that 72.4 percent of the total population is fully vaccinated, and that the county has around 175,000 residents aged 5 to 11. She added that the county is on pace to meet the hospitalization metric, and that the focus would be on limiting transmission and boosting vaccination.

"The most important thing is that we have metrics that are relatively simple, that the public can see and that we can track them together," Cody said.

Mask requirements will only be lifted in places that are not subject to state and federal masking rules.

Businesses, nonprofits, churches and other institutions with public indoor spaces will still have the right to impose their own requirements.

The affected counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Sonoma, along with the city of Berkeley, which has its own health department. Those jurisdictions issued a mask mandate in response to a summer surge in cases, hospitalizations and deaths fueled by the delta variant.

Cases and hospitalizations are now falling as vaccination rates increase.

Health officers have worked together since the start of the pandemic, as many residents live and work in different counties. A Bay Area-wide approach was seen as imperative to slow COVID-19 transmission here.

"What we landed on was shared metrics," Cody said. "It may be that one county reaches the metric before another adjacent county. We will probably be lifting the indoor masking requirement at different times."

State Requirements

California's health guidance for face coverings will remain in effect after local mask requirements are lifted. People who are not fully vaccinated for COVID-19 must continue to wear masks in businesses and indoor public spaces.

The state also required face coverings for everyone, regardless of vaccination status, in health care facilities, on public transit and in adult and senior care facilities.

California's mask guidelines in K-12 schools will not be affected by changes to local health orders.

An Food and Drug Administration advisory committee is scheduled to consider an application from Pfizer-BioNTech to grant emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine in 5- to 11-year-olds on Oct. 26