CA's Unvaccinated Can Now Unmask Indoors

CALIFORNIA — Unvaccinated Californians will no longer be required to mask up in indoor public settings, state officials announced Monday. The move marked one of the first attempts to shed sweeping restrictions for unvaccinated residents.

California lifted its indoor mask mandate on Feb. 16 but did not include unvaccinated people. The state had some of the strictest pandemic rules in the nation, but Monday's announcement revoked one of the last mask requirements left in the state.

Ultimately, officials maintained on Monday that it will be up to businesses and counties to set their own masking rules.

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Santa Clara County remained one of the only counties to maintain an indoor mask mandate after the state dropped its sweeping mandate on Feb. 16, but it will align with the state on Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The state will drop a masking requirement for children in classrooms on March 12, officials also announced Monday.

Masks will still be required in high-transmission settings such as public transit, emergency shelters, health care settings, correctional facilities, homeless shelters and long-term care facilities.

"The data is trending in the right direction," Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state's health secretary, said in a news conference Monday.

After a devastating winter omicron surge, coronavirus cases have plummeted in California. On Monday, the state's testing positive rate was 2.9 percent, down from 8.8 percent on Feb. 8. Hospitalizations have also declined, from more than 10,000 at the beginning of the month to around 4,233 on Monday.

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Last month, California became the first state to formally shift to an endemic approach to the coronavirus with Gov. Gavin Newsom's announcement of a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business shutdowns.

"California continues to adjust our policies based on the latest data and science, applying what we've learned over the past two years to guide our response to the pandemic," Newsom said in a joint statement with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Monday.

Health officials have argued over the course of the pandemic that unvaccinated Californians were more likely to contract COVID-19 or be hospitalized with it.

More than 8 in 10 California adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, with 3 in 4 receiving a full dosage, according to the Public Policy Institute of California's February Statewide Survey.

About 12 percent of California adults said they definitely would not receive a coronavirus vaccine, according to PPIC's survey.

Also according to the survey, younger Californians make up a larger share of those who are unvaccinated.

As the omicron crisis fades into the background, worries about infection have diminished among both vaccinated and unvaccinated Californians. Roughly two-thirds of vaccinated Americans said they are somewhat worried about COVID-19 infection. About 4 in 10 unvaccinated Americans said the same, according to a January AP-NORC poll.

"I think it's reasonable and appropriate for people to live their lives a little more as the risk of infection goes down but to do it in a way that recognizes that, at some point, we’re going to have another wave," said Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "And we’re going to need to be willing to buckle down just a little bit in the future."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.