As the state officially eased many COVID-era masking rules on Monday, April 3, Los Angeles County will retain its vaccine requirement and mask mandate for all health workers when they are around patients. Visitors and patients, however, will no longer be required to wear a mask.
The county’s rules are more restrictive than other parts of the state. The California Department of Public Health ended the statewide mask requirements in healthcare and other indoor high-risk settings — including correctional facilities and emergency and homeless shelters.
It’s unclear how long the tougher guidelines will be in place locally, but county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer has said they will be reassessed in September, if not sooner.
Many other restrictions have gone away in the county, however. Local leaders have already aligned with the state’s five-day isolation and quarantine recommendations. And workers in correctional roles, detention facilities and adult day care centers are no longer be required to be vaccinated.
“Our communities did a lot of the hard work by getting vaccinated and boosted, staying home and testing when sick, requesting treatments when positive, and masking to slow the spread,” said CDPH Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Tomás Aragón. “With these critical actions, and a lot of patience and persistence, we have now reached a point where we can update some of the COVID-19 guidance to continue to balance prevention and adapting to living with COVID-19.”
As rules ease, monitoring of the virus will continue. County officials will continue to require schools, employers and hospitals and clinics to record COVID numbers and report outbreaks.
“This is when we take the training wheels off, ” said Dr. Kimberly A. Shriner, infectious disease expert at Huntington Hospital, Pasadena. “We have to learn to live with COVID19 … There are things that we’ve sort of trained the public to do now, hopefully, that ingrained in…
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