Pasadena To Reinstate Mask Mandate Amid COVID-19 Surge

PASADENA, CA — The Pasadena Public Health Department will reinstate its indoor mask mandate of city residents and visitors as cases of COVID-19 continue to rise across Los Angeles County.

Masks will soon be required indoors again in any public setting or business, regardless of a person's vaccination status, Pasadena Public Health Department Director Dr. Ying-Ying Goh announced during Monday's City Council meeting.

Pasadena's indoor mask mandate still needs to be finalized by the City Attorney's Office, but it is expected to be implemented sometime later this week, Goh said.

Pasadena will also become the first city in Southern California to require city employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. However, details on how the city will implement the mandate were not immediately available.

The city's coronavirus case rate has met the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's threshold for what's considered "substantial transmission," Goh said.

"Since July 1, the average daily number of confirmed cases has increased by 240 percent," she said. "Our daily average case rate is up from about 4.1 to 14.3."

The city’s move follows Los Angeles County reinstating its mask mandate this past weekend after the county began to record 101 coronavirus cases for every 100,000 residents a week. The spike in cases both in the county and Pasadena has been spurred by a combination of unvaccinated individuals and the highly transmissible delta variant.

Almost 4 million Los Angeles County residents have yet to be vaccinated against COVID-19, including 1.3 million children who are too young to receive a shot.

Pasadena recorded its first cases of the delta variant last week after six residents from different households contracted the virus. The six live in homes with a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated people, city spokesperson Lisa Derderian said.

The city recorded its first COVID-19 related death earlier this month since April when a 65-year-old unvaccinated man died from the virus.

"Now is the time for anyone who is not yet vaccinated to get fully vaccinated. Help connect friends and family who are not yet vaccinated to a vaccine opportunity as soon as possible," Goh previously said in a statement. "Current vaccines are effective in protecting against the Delta variant that spreads much more easily than prior variants and is more likely to cause serious disease."