While many Americans are no longer advised to wear masks in public indoor settings under new federal health guidance unveiled Friday, Los Angeles County residents are still being recommended to wear masks by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new guidelines from the CDC will ease recommendations for when the general public should wear masks in indoor public settings. Officials didn’t specify the precise metrics that would shape that determination during a briefing, but, according to information posted online, it appears that masking would still be recommended in L.A. County.
The county’s rules were always unlikely to change immediately, even if they could. Public health officials have said they planned to review the latest guidance and present some options for a new masking policy at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. They said they would then consult with business and labor groups, meaning a new masking plan could become clearer later next week.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer pledged to “carefully review the proposed goals, the metrics and the strategies in relation to local conditions and priorities; determine how to best align and integrate relevant metrics and strategies in our own mitigation plans.”
Ferrer said Thursday that she didn’t expect the county to suddenly decide to relax L.A. County rules later Friday, a mere hours after the CDC’s new guidelines were released. She added that she thinks “it would be a lot to ask us to move immediately with changes because we do know that CDC is going to ask everyone to look at local conditions as they make moves.”
“We have to look at it,” she said.
In a call with reporters, CDC officials outlined a new three-level system that will define counties as having low, medium or high levels of community transmission. The assignment will be based on several factors, including new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and hospital…