CDC calls for masks. Here’s why North Bay counties so far aren’t requiring them

Even though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday ranked 13 California counties as having a high level of “COVID-19 danger,” that doesn’t mean the federal agency has the authority to require people to wear masks.

Rather, it’s a recommendation.

The CDC every Thursday on its website updates the risk level for COVID-19 in every county in every state, recommending when and where to wear a mask based on the familiar metrics that include new coronavirus cases and hospitalization rates.

California’s upgraded risk levels reflect a surge of COVID-19 sweeping through most of the U.S., largely fueled by more contagious offshoots of the omicron variant. One of those subvariants, BA.2.12.1, recently became dominant both nationwide and within the CDC region that includes California, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Of the 13 counties in the state placed in the high level, five are in the North Bay: Marin, Mendocino, Solano, Sonoma and Napa.

Dr. Karen Relucio, Napa County’s health officer, told the Business Journal in an email statement Friday that the county is sticking with its recommendation from several months ago that people continue to mask indoors.

She noted there would be no immediate change because of the county’s continued high vaccination and booster rates, and widespread availability of COVID-19 testing and treatments.

“At this time, people can make decisions on ways to reduce their risk — fortunately there are a number of strategies available now and masking is one of them,” Relucio said.

On May 13, Napa, Marin, Sonoma and other Bay Area county and city governments issued an appeal to their residents to wear masks in public indoor settings as cases rose. But they didn’t issue orders to require face coverings at that time.

Marin County also is not planning to issue a masking policy at this time, according to Laine Hendricks, Marin County public information officer.

“We are carefully monitoring the situation but we also know, by and large, that our residents know what to do in this situation and that many have been wearing masks,” Hendricks said. “Yes, we are seeing a higher transmission rate than maybe a month or two months ago, but we’re also taking into account that our hospitalization rates remain relatively low, considering, and we have one of the highest vaccination rates, community-wide, in the state.”

In California, the CDC’s latest report came as Alameda County decided to reinstate mask requirements for indoor settings, even though it was ranked as being at medium risk for COVID-19, according to the government agency.

Alameda County health officials in a Thursday news release said they “expect to reach CDC’s ‘high’ COVID-19 community level soon, given current trends.”

Hendricks, of Marin County, noted that “when you consider the overall landscape, and that includes vaccination rates, we’re in a little bit of a different situation than Alameda County.”

Sonoma County spokesperson Matt Brown told The Press Democrat on Thursday the county is not currently considering an indoor mask mandate, but that Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase is monitoring the situation and in touch with other Bay Area health officers and would reassess as needed.

Meanwhile, Solano County Public Health Administrator Jayleen Richards said the county won’t be reinstating requirements to wear masks indoors.

“Solano Public Health continues to monitor hospitalization and ICU data at the local level, as well as data related to outbreaks at long-term care facilities,” Richards wrote in an email Friday. “Hospitalization and ICU data are an indicator of the health care capacity to serve Solano County residents and surrounding areas. We continue to closely monitor outbreaks within long-term care facilities because residents in these facilities are at high-risk for severe illness and death due to COVID-19 infection.”

Solano is deferring to California Department of Public Health guidelines on masks.

The latest department guidance on face coverings was on April 20, just after a federal judge struck down the CDC’s early 2021 requirement for masks on public transportation.

Mendocino County continues its “strong recommendation” for face coverings in indoor public settings, and Dr. Andrew Coren, the county’s health officer is considering a mandate but hasn’t yet decided on it, said Anne Molgaard, public health director.

What’s on Coren’s mind, in particular, are county case rates and hospitalization rates for the county, which have jumped 500% and 300%, respectively, for the six weeks ending Thursday, according to Molgaard.

And the situation likely is a lot worse, because home tests often aren’t reported to county officials, Molgaard said.

“We know there is a lot more COVID in our community than positive PCR tests show, and that’s made it more difficult this time than in previous waves,” Molgaard said. “In previous waves, we didn’t have as many at-home tests so we had a better grip on the data.”

To deal with that data gap, county officials are seeking state money to set up sampling of local wastewater to estimate levels of community infection.

“it was more expensive than we could afford,” Molgaard said.

Currently, three North Bay counties — Napa, Solano and Marin — are among 11 statewide that are part of the COVID-Web project at UC Berkeley. Samples of human waste from municipal wastewater plants are tested for the COVID-19 virus. That gives a rough approximation of how much of the virus is circulating in communities that feed into a given treatment system.

The CDC on Thursday placed Lake County, the other North Bay county, at “medium” community level for COVID-19 risk.

The other California counties at the high level this week, according to the CDC, are Del Norte, El Dorado, Monterey, Placer, San Benito, Santa Clara, Sacramento and Yolo.

Up until Thursday, none of California’s 58 counties had reached the CDC’s high level of risk for COVID-19 since recovering from winter’s omicron surge earlier this year, the Sacramento Bee reported Thursday.

Jeff Quackenbush contributed to this report.

Show Comment