Mask Mandate Update: California Officials Address Rising COVID Cases

Health officials in California recently spoke about the possible return of mask mandates in the state amid a slight uptick in COVID-19 cases.

On Thursday, officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health held a press conference to speak about a rise in new COVID-19 cases, saying that over the past week cases have doubled.

During the press conference, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer was asked about the potential return to mask mandates and if the county would ever make them mandatory again.

"'Ever' is not a word I'm comfortable with. There's not that level of certainty with this pandemic. I'm never going to say there's not going to be a time when we all need to put our masks back on. I am going to say we certainly don't all need to put our masks back on now. We are at a place where people make their own assessment," she said, Deadline reported.

The comments by Ferrer come amid recent discussion on the return to mask mandates in certain areas across the country as two new COVID-19 strains have been detected, including the BA.2.86 variant and the EG.5 variant.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that the BA.2.86 variant "may be more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines."

In California, data from the state government shows COVID-19 hospitalizations increasing by 10.1 percent compared to the previous week, with a weekly total number of hospitalizations at 2,620.

Across the United States, data from the CDC shows a 18.8 percent increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations for the week of August 13 to August 19, when compared to the week earlier. During the week ending on August 19, there were a total number of 15,067 COVID-19 hospitalizations, the CDC data shows.

Kaiser Permanente, a health care company headquartered in California, recently announced that it was returning to its mask mandate for visitors, staff members and patients.

"Kaiser Permanente is committed to protecting the safety of our members, patients, employees, physicians and visitors, which includes taking appropriate steps to prevent the spread of transmissible infectious diseases in our facilities," the company told Newsweek late last month. "Respiratory protection and the use of masking is an important component in keeping our health care workers, physicians and patients safe."

Lionsgate also previously announced a mask mandate for employees, but the company lifted its requirement a few days after.

During the press conference, Ferrer said that mask mandates are usually imposed by companies or organizations in California "if there's a reasonable amount of spread," and noted that these requirements could be removed in a certain amount of days if the spread of new COVID-19 cases declines.

Newsweek reached out to California Governor Gavin Newsom's office via email for any comment on a potential wider spread mask mandate in the state.