SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – As two highly contagious strains of the COVID-19 omicron variant drive a potentially record-setting surge of infections in the Bay Area, California's most populous county could require masks in public indoor spaces once more.
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If Los Angeles County continues to have a high level of COVID-19 – as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – for two more weeks, then the county will issue a mask mandate on July 29. Amid the delta variant's spread last summer, the county's July mask mandate preceded several Bay Area counties issuing their own about two weeks later in August.
The CDC recommends wearing masks aboard public transportation and in public indoor spaces when there's a high community level of COVID-19, as is currently the case in all nine Bay Area counties. The California Department of Public Health currently recommends surgical masks, N95s, KN95s and KF94s with a "good fit" over cloth masks.
But short of a requirement, Dr. Bruce Lee – a professor of health policy and management at City University of New York and a Forbes senior contributor – said Friday on KCBS Radio's "Ask An Expert" that masking's potential as a mitigation measure is limited.
"So the question is can we get more people to wear masks, and one of the challenges is we've found that, when masks aren't required, then a lot of people don't wear masks," Lee told KCBS Radio's Melissa Culross. "And it's really a population intervention where you're protected if not just you are wearing a mask, but other people are wearing masks as well."
If Los Angeles County ultimately requires masks once more at the end of the month, it would do so in a different national environment than when officials brought back the requirement last summer. Few counties, even those that previously required masks, have done so again since April, when a federal judge in Florida struck down the CDC's mask mandate for travelers on airlines and public transit.
In the Bay Area, BART is the only major transit agency requiring masks, and that rule could expire as soon as Monday. As cases rose this spring, Alameda County was the only one in the Bay Area to bring back its mask mandate in June, lifting the requirement after about three weeks. Public health officials in the rest of the Bay Area told KCBS Radio at the time they weren't considering requiring masks again.
Lee said masking remains an important tool to mitigate COVID-19, as does vaccination. Those can't be the only tools, however, and he said public health officials have focused far too often on "one intervention at a time" during the pandemic.
"At the very beginning, there was a focus on social distancing, flattening the curve," Lee said. "And then later, the focus became testing, testing, testing. And then later, it became face masks, and later, vaccinations, when in actuality, these things are layers that we should try to layer on simultaneously because, again, one thing is not going to protect you completely."
Whether masks are once again required in LA, the Bay Area or elsewhere, Lee said public health officials and experts "need to change the narrative" surrounding them. He pointed to the "politicization of mask use" coming to "symbolize certain things when, in actuality when you think about it, it allows you to do things."
"It's like many other types of protection," Lee said. "If you feel protected, then you can be more free at work, or you can be more free going to the store, or going to entertainment venues or things like that."
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