CDC Updates COVID Mask Guidelines: What It Means In California

CALIFORNIA — Ten days after California's universal mask mandate expired, federal health officials have followed suit.

The Biden administration on Friday dramatically loosened federal COVID-19 mask guidance as infection rates return to pre-omicron variant levels around the country.

About 70 percent of Americans will be able to shed their masks while indoors. The new framework categorizes counties by “low,” “medium” or “high” risk. The CDC isn’t recommending mask-wearing in the first two categories, except among people who have underlying health conditions that put them at high risk for COVID-19.

In schools, masking is only recommended in counties with a high risk of infection.

Gov. Gavin Newsom first ordered all Californians to wear face coverings in June 2020 as coronavirus cases surged. Since then, mask mandates have been implemented — and changed — multiple times amid rising and falling COVID-19 cases.

As Los Angeles Patch previously reported, the state may have given a green light for vaccinated residents to unmask, but the state's 58 counties ultimately set local masking rules. In the Southland, the mask mandate for vaccinated people immediately ended in all counties except Los Angeles County once the state lifted the mandate. Los Angeles County said this week said it, too, would ease masking requirements.

In Northern California, Santa Clara County was the only Bay Area county that held on to its mask mandate. Like Los Angeles, Santa Clara also plans to ditch its indoor, universal mask mandate.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously recommended that people wear masks in areas with substantial or high transmission. That's roughly 95 percent of U.S. counties, according to the latest data. The new guidance comes as the virus becomes endemic and the Biden administration focuses on preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19 rather than infections.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, tweeted Thursday her agency will focus on preventing the spread of COVID-19 to minimize the strain on the health care system.

In a White House briefing last week, she said hospital capacity is an “important barometer.”

“Our hospitals need to be able to take care of people with heart attacks and strokes,” she said. “Our emergency departments can’t be so overwhelmed that patients with emergent issues have to wait in line.”

Community infection rates will determine when and where extra precautions such as mask wearing and testing should be targeted, Walensky said in her Thursday night tweets.

“Moving forward, our approach will advise enhanced prevention efforts in communities with a high volume of severe illness and will also focus on protecting our healthcare systems from being overwhelmed,” she tweeted.

The omicron variant of the coronavirus is highly contagious, but generally causes less severe COVID-19 illnesses than other variants, especially among people who are fully vaccinated and boosted, data shows.

Daily U.S. COVID-19 infection rates are down to about 82,000 cases nationwide, according to a database kept by The New York Times, and hospitalizations are down about 44 percent. However, about 2,000 people a day still are dying of the virus, The Times reported.

In California, 83 percent of the population was vaccinated as of Friday.

About 5,400 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in California as of Wednesday, far below the state's highest peak of about 21,000 in January 2021, and down significantly from about 14,000 recorded during the omicron surge in January 2022.

The number of Californians dying from the disease has also fallen into the double digits after peaking in January 2021 at about 700 per day, and from about 200 per day in January 2022.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.