Los Angeles County’s top health official on Thursday signaled that the county may impose its COVID-19-related mask mandate in the coming weeks.
“If both hospitalization indicators, new COVID-19 admissions and the proportion of staffed in-patient beds occupied by COVID patients, surpass the threshold for high, LA County will return to universal indoor masking,” LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a Thursday news conference.
Ferrer added that mask requirements will return if Los Angeles County has daily average hospital admissions rate of 10 people per 100,000 or if more than 10 percent of staffed inpatient beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients. On Thursday, the Los Angeles Health Department reported 4,493 new COVID-19 cases and 14 additional deaths.
Data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that in recent months, COVID-19 deaths have plummeted across the United States. Cases and hospitalizations have shown a slight uptick nationwide.
After Ferrer’s comments, several prominent conservatives criticized the possibility the county would return to mandating masks. In 2021 and early 2022, there were frequent protests across Los Angeles over the mask mandate.
“About the @lapublichealth Director who is about to impose another indoor mask mandate for Los Angeles County. I will be there for Christmas and will not comply,” wrote Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s aide, Christina Pushaw, on Twitter on Thursday.
LA County had only lifted its mask mandate for public transit in September 2022. If the mandate returns to the county, that rule could be re-imposed.
Around the same time, New York state ended its 28-month-old mask mandate for public transit, including New York City’s subway system. In April, the Biden administration decided to stop enforcing a nationwide mask mandate on public transportation after a Florida judge ruled that the mandate was illegal.
Earlier this year, LA County was slated to reinstate an indoor mask requirement as officials claimed there was a rise in cases. However, the county held off on re-implementing the mask mandate after case rates and hospitalizations dropped.
It comes as the White House released an updated preparedness plan on Thursday saying that masks “have a time and a place” and appeared to recommend against issuing blanket mandates.
“With a broad range of other protective tools in place, the CDC has announced an updated framework for guidance on preventive measures like masking—moving away from simply basing broad recommendations on case counts and test positivity, and instead encouraging prevention measures like masking when they are most needed to minimize severe disease,” it said.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, at podium, speaks at a news conference with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (L), in Los Angeles on March 12, 2020. Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo
Mask Efficacy?
Since the start of the pandemic, mask mandates have remained controversial. When the CDC recommended masks in April 2020, officials cited zero studies on mask effectiveness, although the agency later included studies that supported its mask recommendation.There have also been studies suggesting that mask mandates are not effective at stopping transmission. One published by Cornell University in May showed that the university’s mask rule had a limited impact on the spread of the Omicron variant in 2021 and early 2022.
“Cornell’s experience shows that traditional public health interventions were not a match for Omicron. While vaccination protected against severe illness, it was not sufficient to prevent rapid spread, even when combined with other public health measures including widespread surveillance testing,” the paper stated.
Researchers in Spain, meanwhile, discovered that mask rules for Spanish schoolchildren were not linked to lower COVID-19 rates during the 2021-2022 school year. “If the implementation of masks had a significant effect on transmission, we would have found less transmission in the first year of elementary (6-year-olds) than in P5 (the previous year),” researcher Clara Platts told El Pais. “But there were no differences between these two years.”
Some studies have said otherwise, however. One released by Stanford University last year—before the spread of Omicron—found that “wearing a surgical face mask over the mouth and nose” can reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon told The Epoch Times about six months ago that it was “known long before COVID-19 that face masks don’t do anything.”
“Many don’t know that blue medical masks aren’t filters,” he said. “Your inspired and expired air moves in and out between the mask [and] your face. They are splashguards, that’s all.”
