Los Angeles County reimposes indoor mask mandate due to rise in COVID-19 cases

Amid the rise in COVID-19 cases, Los Angeles County will reinstate its mask mandate from Saturday night. The rapid increase in COVID-19 cases will require people to wear face masks indoors regardless of vaccination status, Los Angeles County Health Officer Muntu Davis said in a news conference. In order to control the spread of the virus, the people of the region will be required to wear a mask from 11:59 pm on July 17. 

Mask mandatory in LA County

The health authorities have issued the mandatory mask rule due to the rising COVID-19 cases. The daily test positivity rate in Los Angeles County has risen to 3.7 per cent, from around 0.5 per cent on June 15, according to the news release. The authorities in the news release stated that the mask requirements will have some exceptions that were in place prior to the June 15 reopening.  The increase in COVID-19 cases has been reported due to the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus. The health authorities pointed out that the people vaccinated with both doses of vaccine are well protected against delta variant. About 4 million people are not yet vaccinated in LA County that increases the risk of spreading the variant within the region. 

Los Angeles Health Officer Muntu Davis in the news release said that masking requirements will be in place until the spreading of the virus is controlled. Davis added that people must again wear masks indoors irrespective of their vaccination status. Davis urged people to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their families against the COVID-19 pandemic. He pointed out that vaccination reduced the risk of infection and hospitalization. 

"We expect to keep masking requirements in place until we begin to see improvements in our community transmission of COVID-19. But waiting for us to be at high community transmission level before making a change would be too late", Davis said in the news release. 

COVID-19 situation in LA County

According to Public health Los Angeles County, 1,537 new COVID-19 cases were reported on Thursday, which is the highest since mid-March. The total number of COVID-19 cases in LA County have reached 1,262,578. Three new deaths due to the virus were reported taking the overall fatalities to 24,566. As of July 11, more than 10,712,037 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered. Of these 4,763,590 people have been jabbed with both doses of the vaccine while 5,946,447 have received one dose of vaccine. 

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