With a decision expected tomorrow on whether Los Angeles County will reimpose the indoor mask mandate due to the increase in cases of the more infectious BA.5 variant, the city of El Segundo today added your name in the list of local cities. that it does not want to enforce this rule if it is implemented by the county.
“My colleagues on the City Council and I strongly believe that the decision to wear a mask should be the choice of the individual and should not be imposed by LA County,” said the mayor of El Segundo, Drew Boyles, in a statement. “People should review the available data and consider their own circumstances and make their own decisions about wearing a mask. Businesses should consider the various agencies that regulate their businesses as part of to decide how they will react to a potential change to masking requirements.”
The council voted during a special meeting Tuesday night against enforcing a potential mask mandate.
The Beverly Hills City Council took a similar vote Monday night, saying it will not enforce any new mask mandates. Ironically, in 2020 Beverly Hills was one of the first cities in LA County to institute an outdoor mask mandate. City officials decreed that everyone had to wear some form of face covering every time they left their homes.
The cities of Long Beach and Pasadena, both of which operate their own separate health departments from the county and thus have the authority to decide on their own health officer orders, announced Tuesday that they will not issue mask mandates , even if the county does.
“The [Long Beach] The Department of Health strongly encourages people to practice personal responsibility and common sense measures to protect themselves, their loved ones and the greater community from Covid-19,” according to a statement from Long Beach. “People are advised to mask up indoors when in public places, take rapid tests before and three to five days after social gatherings, and choose outdoor activities whenever possible.”
Both Long Beach and Pasadena officials said they would continue to monitor the Covid situation. Pasadena officials said they would “consider appropriate public health actions to protect our community as the situation changes.”
The county Department of Public Health is expected to announce Thursday whether a new mask mandate will be imposed starting Friday.
County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer has said the mandate will be imposed if the county remains at the “high” level of virus activity, as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , for two consecutive weeks. The county will reach that two-week threshold on Thursday.
The county moved into the high category when the average daily rate of new Covid-related hospital admissions reached a rate of 10 per 100,000 residents. As of last Thursday, the county’s rate reached 11.7 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The covid infection and hospital numbers had been stabilizing and even declining over the past week and a half. Ferrer said last week — and reiterated Tuesday — that if downward trends continue, the county could delay imposing a new mask mandate.
He told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that, given the recent declines, “we may be in a position to stop the implementation of universal masking.”
Ferrer said on Tuesday that most metrics tracking the pandemic were down, noting that the average daily rate of new cases over the past week had fallen to about 6,100, down from 6,700 the previous week. Virus-related hospitalizations had also stabilized, he said, as had the daily death toll, though he stressed that the latter number remained too high, at about 14 deaths a day.
But on Wednesday, the numbers rose again. The number of newly reported Covid cases doubled from just over 3,500 on Tuesday to just over 7,300. The increase follows a familiar pattern in recent weeks, which may have given false hope earlier in the week: because testing and test results are slow over the weekend, numbers from Sunday to Tuesday are often very lower ones But once the backlog is cleared, the daily case count generally increases significantly each day until Saturday. Ferrer has also warned that because domestic test results are not reported, current daily records are likely to be “vastly underestimated”.
Test positivity, which as a percentage of total cases and the 7-day average is often more accurate, also rose again. After falling almost a point to just above 14% yesterday, the figures have recalibrated, with most of the week in the low 15% range and Wednesday’s figure rising to 16.2% .
Hospitalizations for Covid have risen slightly since Monday to around 1,280, but this is down from 1,329 last Thursday. But as Ferrer warned last week, if daily cases increase, hospitalizations will almost certainly follow suit two weeks later, making the logic of stopping a mask mandate difficult for officials.
Deaths have also increased significantly today, from 5 on Monday to 20 today. The latter figure is in line with views at the end of last week.
Los Angeles County is the only jurisdiction in the state considering a masking mandate, though all but eight of its counties are also in the CDC’s “high” level of virus activity.
While Ferrer has defended the idea of a mandate, calling it a proven and simple tool to slow the transmission of the virus and protect workers at domestic companies, opposition to the concept has been mounting.
County Supervisor Kathryn Barger issued a statement Monday saying she will not support a mandate. He said he agrees that masks are an effective tool against the spread of the virus, but doesn’t think mandating them will have the desired effect.
“I am strongly opposed to mandating masking, because I really think it will have the opposite effect,” Barger said during Tuesday’s board meeting.
Supervisor Janice Hahn joined her in opposing a potential mandate, saying she fears imposing such a rule “will be very divisive for LA County.” The two were also the dissenting voices before the mask mandates were lifted in January.
“Honestly, I think there is a significant number of the population that is not willing to accept mask mandates at this time,” Hahn said. “And many of them, those who have contacted me, pointed out that we now have more tools than we had at the beginning of the pandemic.
“I’m personally concerned … that we’re losing the confidence on this occasion of a part of the public that has really been with us so far,” he said.
Hahn suggested the county consider simply expanding the list of places where masks are still required to include grocery stores and pharmacies, rather than all indoor spaces. Ferrer said his department would consider the idea.
The City News Service contributed to this report.