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Everyone in California is now recommended to mask up indoors

2 mins read

The state of California updated its mask guidance to recommend everyone — regardless of vaccination status — to use masks indoors following the recommendation of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for most Californians to mask up indoors.

Adult and senior care facilities were added to locations like hospitals and public transit where it is required to use masks after the state reopened last month.

It was not hard to anticipate that the state would settle on a recommendation and not a mandate even before the new CDC guidance was released.

Los Angeles and Yolo were currently implementing the mandate. Other areas like the Bay Area and Solano, meanwhile, are recommending mask use.

After the CDC and state guidance, it is still uncertain whether the counties will turn the recommendations into mandates.

According to the CDC, the updated guidance was made based on fresh evidence proving that individuals who already received complete vaccines can more easily transmit the delta variant, as compared to other virus strains, to unvaccinated persons.

When earlier strains of the virus were dominant, vaccinated people who were infected were discovered to have low levels of virus in their nose and throats, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky noted, adding that these persons’ probability of spreading the virus is less.

But Walensky said that there were changes in delta variant cases as the virus level in vaccinated people is “indistinguishable” from the virus level in their unvaccinated counterparts, SFGate reported.

State workers and health care employees in California this week were required to give proof of vaccination or to undergo regular testing — making it the first state to do so. Added to this, the state also required universal masking and other prevention efforts in its K-12 guidance as educational institutions are fully opening for the next school year.

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