Sonoma County, six other Bay Area counties reinstate indoor mask mandate

Amid a persistent surge of coronavirus cases, public health officials in Sonoma County and six other Bay Area counties, plus the city of Berkeley, Monday ordered all residents in the region to again wear face coverings indoors in public settings, regardless of vaccination status.

The mask mandate takes effect at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday.

“We hope that people are going to take this order seriously and protect themselves and their community,” Dr. Sundari Mase, Sonoma County’s health officer, said during a joint press conference of Bay Area public health officials.

Mase and her peers said it will be up to employers and businesses to enforce the mandate to help the region get a grip on the high infectious pandemic disease that once again is widely circulating in communities.

“We’ll work closely with our employers and our businesses to ensure that this occurs in our public spaces,” she said of mask wearing.

On the day the mask mandate was ordered, Sonoma County reported another coronavirus death of an unvaccinated person. A man between 50 and 64 with underlying health problems died at a local hospital July 26. His death is the 12th local fatality in July and the 331st in the county since the pandemic began in March 2020.

Officials said face coverings indoors block transmission of the virus. Taking this public health action now is crucial as the more contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is rapidly spreading throughout the Bay Area and beyond. The delta strain, a highly transmissible mutation, is thought to be 60% more contagious than the previously dominant coronavirus mutation.

The mask requirement is aimed at halting that spread. Public health leaders in Sonoma, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara counties, as well as Berkeley, each issued a similar order requiring mask wearing.

Notably absent, Napa and Solano counties decided to continue with a recommendation of mask wearing inside public places rather than escalate to an order. The mandates will remain in effect until virus-related hospitalizations subside in the respective areas.

Indoor masking rules had been in place in the Bay Area since early in the pandemic in spring 2020, but were lifted for vaccinated individuals in California on June 15, when Gov. Gavin Newsom fully reopened the state. Only a month later, Bay Area counties were urging residents, even those vaccinated, to once again don their face coverings.

Businesses are required to implement the indoor mask mandate. Also, public health officials recommended all employers make face coverings available to employees and individuals entering their workplaces. Officials said office workers in their own cubicles near colleagues should wear masks, but those who have enclosed offices can work without face coverings.

Dr. Lisa Santora, deputy health officer of Marin County, said the goal of this public health action is to avoid further disruption to local businesses and residents’ daily activities.

“Masking is a simple and effective tool to support us in this battle” against the pandemic disease, Santora said. “And, we also are all focusing on a safer return to school this fall.”

Santora said the delta strain of the coronavirus, which is now raging across the country, has sharply boosted transmission rates of COVID-19, even in areas with enviable vaccination rates, such as Marin County. That county has 86.5% of residents 12 and older fully inoculated compared with the 70.4% share of fully vaccinated residents in Sonoma County.

Since April, she said, the share of “breakthrough” virus infections among fully vaccinated people has doubled each month. Because of the challenges posed by the more contagious delta strain, “nonpharmaceutical interventions like masking are needed to reduce transmission of the delta variant and keep our schools open this year,” Santora said.

Kristen Rodriguez, an attorney from Orange County who was shopping at the Healdsburg Running Company on Monday, supports mask wearing. Rodriguez, 38, said her employer recently reinstated mandatory face coverings.

“It’s the safest course of action to make sure we’re protecting everyone in our community,” she said.

Skip Brand, owner of the running shop, said he thought businesses and local residents will fall right back into the habit of wearing face coverings indoors.

At Fideaux, a pet boutique in Healdsburg for dogs and cats, Rena Charles, 40, of Santa Rosa, and her partner Alex Klado, 42, wore masks while they shopped, although several customers did not.

Charles, who manages the nearby Aerena Galleries & Gardens, said she had a feeling a mask mandate would be coming, given the recent spike in COVID-19 cases.

“We want to do what’s safest for our team and our visitors,” Charles said, noting that early in the pandemic a cousin in New York, a mother of two kids, died after contracting the virus.

During Monday’s press briefing, Bay Area public health officials said that although vaccines are effective against the delta variant, the powerful virus mutation is still infecting a small percentage of vaccinated people in the Bay Area.

Inoculated residents are protected against severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19, officials said. But Dr. Nicholas Moss, the health officer for Alameda County, said there is growing evidence suggesting inoculated people are more likely to spread the coronavirus to others if they are infected by the delta variant.

"So that’s really a change from what we saw with earlier variants,“ Moss said. ”For that reason, the added layer of protection of masks on everybody in public settings becomes much more important.“

Area public health officials said the mask directive is consistent with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the California Department of Public Health, which both recommended that fully vaccinated individuals wear masks in indoor public settings. But it’s actually stricter because it’s mandatory in the seven area counties.

In Sonoma County, active COVID-19 cases have reached 1,500 for the first time since Feb 29. At that time, the county was coming off a winter surge of cases that claimed the lives of 149 local residents during the months of December, January and February.

The winter death toll comprises 45% of the 331 local coronavirus-related deaths since the pandemic began. At the peak of the winter surge, there were more than 100 coronavirus patients getting treatment at local hospitals.

That dark winter was followed by a springtime lull in new virus infections, with active local cases dropping to about 300 by mid-May and hospitalizations throughout the county dropping to as low as half a dozen.

Local hospitals are once again reporting an influx of patients with COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus. As of Sunday, there were 59 patients in Sonoma County hospitals, and 15 of them in intensive-care beds.

Last week, county hospitalizations related to the pandemic disease hovered at about 45.

Meanwhile, Napa and Solano counties stayed the course Monday. Napa County’s health officer said Monday she will keep following state health guidance, which recommends masking indoors, said Dr. Karen Relucio, Napa’s health officer.

“The most important strategy to reduce COVID-19 transmission and hospitalization is vaccination and Napa County is continuing to educate and encourage people to get vaccinated as soon as possible,” Relucio said in a statement. “A mask mandate may disincentivize those people who are undecided about vaccination.”

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.