Marin County is following San Francisco's lead in loosening some of its mask restrictions.
The county was one of eight in the Bay Area, as well as the City of Berkeley, that announced on Thursday the criteria to drop its public indoor mask mandate. San Francisco went a step further in announcing "offices, gyms and certain other settings with 100% vaccination" would no longer need to require masks on Oct. 15, and Marin County did the same on Friday.
As long as a gym, fitness center, office, religious gathering or college class has fewer than 100 people, access to the setting is controlled and everyone with access is two weeks removed from their last dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, masks aren't required indoors.
"We're not ready to lift the mandate across the board, but we're in a good place to ease restrictions for the safest settings," Marin County Public Health Officer Dr. Matt Willis said in a release on Friday.
"Science shows that when an entire group is vaccinated, the risk of infection is much lower. Some settings have already adopted mandatory vaccination policies for all staff and customers, and this gives more incentive for others to follow suit," he added.
Marin County expressed confidence it would reach the three criteria necessary to drop the indoor mask mandate altogether "over the coming weeks."
The county needs 80% of the total population to be fully vaccinated (or to wait until eight weeks after an emergency use authorization for children aged 5-11), hospitalizations that Willis deems low and stable as well as "moderate" community transmission, as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for at least three weeks.
As of Friday, 79.8% of Marin County's residents had been fully vaccinated, far outpacing the other Bay Area counties. Eleven county residents are currently hospitalized, and four are in the ICU. Marin County currently has "substantial" transmission, averaging between 50-100 new cases per day for every 100,000 residents over the last week, according to CDC data.
Every other Bay Area county is, at least, currently experiencing "substantial" transmission. But if and when Marin County drops to "moderate" levels, its high vaccination rates mean it could soon after be the first Bay Area jurisdiction following the new criteria to lift its public indoor mask mandate.
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