Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus as easily as the unvaccinated. The Bay Area health officers said they toughened their mask order after new research by the U.S. “But because the level of death is so low in the Bay Area, I don’t really see the wisdom of reimposing mask mandates.” SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 2: A sign requiring masks outside of the Thrift Box in Willow Glen in San Jose, Calif., on Monday, August 2, 2021. “If we had a massive increase in deaths because our area was unvaccinated, I could see the wisdom in imposing restrictions there,” said Karl Schneider, a 26-year-old from Michigan who works at Stanford. It’s a county mandate, it’s not our choice, it’s the government’s choice.” “At the same time we want everyone to be comfortable. “As a manager of a business of this stature, it’s a little difficult to have to remind guests constantly of all ages to mask up,” said Wright, who is fully vaccinated and was wearing a mask. Starting tomorrow, customers without masks will be asked to order online and wait outside, and those who come in but refuse to wear one won’t be served. Seth Wright, 28, who works as a manager of Verve Coffee Roasters’ Palo Alto location, where about half of the customers and most of its servers and baristas were unmasked Monday, said he is OK with the new order. Customers should wear masks when they come inside and remove them to eat or drink. The health officers said the order doesn’t mean a renewed shutdown of bars and indoor dining. In recent days, the greater Bay Area has seen a number of COVID-19 clusters, including at a concert hall in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a school district in the East Bay city of Brentwood that just returned to classes, and among staff at Bay Area hospitals. “If people have concerns, our complaint portal is still live and available, and our enforcement team will follow up on those as we have during the pandemic,” Williams said. They recommended well-fitting cloth or surgical masks and N95 respirators and discouraged use of thin neck gaiters. Indoor settings are higher risk for COVID-19 transmission, especially when you are with people you do not live with, the health officers warned. Though most of those infections are among unvaccinated people, a growing fraction are among the immunized, particularly older and sicker people. The mandate comes after weeks of growing concern over the delta variant and case counts in the Bay Area that have topped the peaks of last summer’s surge despite the region’s high vaccination rates, with more than 8,200 new cases in the last week - a 32% increase from the week before. Q&A: Here’s what you need to know about the Bay Area’s new mask order We are actually in broad agreement that everyone should be masking when they are indoors. George Han, Santa Clara County deputy health officer. “It is unfortunate that we have to do this at this point in the pandemic,” said Dr. Louisiana issued a similar statewide order Monday. The requirement ends a seven-week respite from ubiquitous mask mandates that had been relaxed when the state shed most of its coronavirus restrictions on businesses and social gatherings. The new health orders require everyone regardless of vaccination status to wear face coverings in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties when indoors in public settings, with limited exceptions, starting Tuesday. Health officers in seven Bay Area counties Monday toughened their indoor mask recommendation into an order - again - to tamp down sharply rising infections driven by the highly contagious COVID-19 delta variant.
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