Biden official sees return of mask mandates as ‘very reasonable’

The U.S. surgeon general predicted Sunday that surging COVID-19 cases would trigger another round of local mask mandates even as Los Angeles County faced pushback on its order requiring facial coverings for the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.

“In areas where there are low numbers of vaccinated people or where cases are rising, it’s very reasonable for counties to take more mitigation measures, like the mask rules that you see coming out in LA,” Dr. Vivek Murthy said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I anticipate that will happen in other parts of the country, too.”

In Los Angeles County, however, residents freed of their masks have shown that they may be unwilling to put them back on without a fight.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced that he would not enforce the mandate, which went into effect at 11:59 p.m. Saturday. He cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s May 13 guidance saying fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks.

“Forcing the vaccinated and those who already contracted COVID-19 to wear masks indoors is not backed by science and contradicts the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines,” the sheriff said in a Friday statement.

Dr. Murthy said CDC guidelines allow local governments to implement their own mask requirements.

“What the CDC did in its guidance, close to two months ago now, is based on the science saying that your risk of getting sick or transmitting the virus was low if you were fully vaccinated,” Dr. Murthy said. “They gave communities and individuals the flexibility to make decisions about what to do with masks.”

As far as former Surgeon General Jerome Adams is concerned, the problem is not the county mask mandate but the CDC guidance, which he called “premature” and “wrong,” based on the recent spike in COVID-19 cases driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

“CDC was well-intended, but the message was misinterpreted, premature, & wrong. Let’s fix it,” Dr. Adams tweeted Saturday.

 

“Counties are going to continue to make these decisions.” @Surgeon_General Dr. Vivek Murthy tells @MarthaRaddatz that counties reinstating mask mandates are “basing their data and their decisions off of what we learned over the last year.” https://t.co/PXkOeejG49 pic.twitter.com/6Ek5gZGcuv

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) July 18, 2021

Seven San Francisco Bay Area counties advised residents Saturday to wear masks indoors voluntarily, according to KPIX-TV, but count former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb among those skeptical that the Los Angeles County mandate will be widely followed.

“I don’t think it’s the right move. I don’t think you can tell people who have been vaccinated that they have to wear masks,” Mr. Gottlieb said on CNBC. 

“I think quite frankly it’s likely to be the exception. I think you’re likely to see very few states and municipalities do this because there’s not going to be a lot of support for mandates at this point,” he said.

Trump administration official Richard Grenell, who heads Fix California, said the Los Angeles County order essentially sends the message that vaccines don’t work.

“So we’ve asked the California Supreme Court to stop this mandate for the vaccinated (both naturally and man made),” tweeted Mr. Grenell, referring to his court filing seeking to block the county move.

The mandate has also become fodder for the Sept. 14 recall election. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was hit with calls from Republicans to override the county order, imposed on the heels of the state’s announcement that K-12 students will be required to wear masks in the 2021-2022 academic year.

Republican candidate Caitlyn Jenner dubbed the mandates “Gavin’s shutdown 2.0.” Candidate John Cox said allowing the county to “require masks for vaccinated people is appalling. This needs to stop.”

“Vaccinated individuals don’t need to wear masks, medical experts have made that clear,” tweeted GOP recall candidate Kevin Faulconer. “We need to be reopening our state, not re-imposing unnecessary restrictions. If Gavin Newsom had any common sense, he’d step up and oppose this, that’s what I’ll do as Governor.”

The CDC reported Friday that the rolling seven-day average in new cases jumped to 26,306, a 69.3% increase compared with the previous seven-day average of 15,541. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported a fourfold rise in cases from July 4.

The county said the seven-day average case rate has risen from 7.1 to 8.2 cases per 100,000 population and that the positivity rate had jumped to 3.8% from 0.4% in early June. The department called the data “alarming trends of increased community spread.”

“This is very disturbing and, of course, as responsible elected officials, we have to do something,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis said on ABC’s “This Week.” “In this case, the county has the ability to do that through our health order.”

Although the delta variant is more contagious than other iterations of the coronavirus, evidence that it is especially deadly or debilitating is mixed at best, Yale Medicine reported. 

Ms. Solis denied Sunday that the masking order is punitive. She said it is needed to counter a spike in cases driven by the delta variant.

“I would say that it’s not punishment; it’s prevention,” she said. “We still have 4 million people out of 10 million that haven’t been vaccinated, and many of them are young people, and we’re seeing that this transmission is so highly contagious that it will cost more in the long run if we have to see our hospitals being impacted.”

Ms. Solis added that “I’m not pleased that we have to go back to using the masks in this manner, but nonetheless it’s going to save lives, and right now that, to me, is what’s most important.”

The county supervisor said she was unconcerned about the sheriff’s decision not to police the mask order because the public health department typically conducts such inspections and enforces the rules.

“I’m not concerned about that. The public overall is smart enough to understand what is being said and how to protect themselves,” she said.

Referring to last year’s budget cuts, Sheriff Villanueva said the department “will not expend our limited resources and instead ask for voluntary compliance.”

“We encourage the DPH to work collaboratively with the Board of Supervisors and law enforcement to establish mandates that are both achievable and supported by science,” the sheriff said.

Los Angeles radio host Larry Elder, a would-be Republican recall candidate, tweeted that he supported the sheriff “100%!!!”

About 52.6% of Los Angeles County residents are fully vaccinated, about the same as the statewide rate of 52.2%, according to the Los Angeles Times vaccine tracker.

Because the delta variant is so new, scientists are still trying to determine how effective the existing vaccines are against the strain. However, just 0.09% of the cases in Los Angeles County since vaccinations began in December involved fully vaccinated people.

Despite being “a small percentage, it is not an insignificant number in light of Los Angeles County’s current substantial and increasing community transmission,” the department said.

Those who do decide to don masks should probably upgrade to the N95, given how easily the delta variant spreads, Mr. Gottlieb said.

“Quality of mask is going to make a difference with a variant that spreads more aggressively like delta does, where people are more contagious and exude more virus, and trying to get in N95 masks into the hands of vulnerable individuals in places where this is really epidemic, I think is going to be important,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”