Marin County will lift its mask mandate in the vast majority of public indoor spaces beginning Monday at noon, officials announced on Friday.
Of the eight Bay Area counties, and the City of Berkeley, that agreed to a new mandate in August for public indoor spaces due to the spread of the COVID-19 delta variant, Marin County is the first jurisdiction to drop the requirement after meeting criteria, established earlier this month.
Dr. Matt Willis, the Marin County Public Health Officer, said in a release Friday the county is recommending, but no longer requiring, indoor mask-wearing. Businesses are still free to require masks inside, if they so choose.
"The biggest difference is that people who are vaccinated will now have a choice of whether or not they want to cover their face in indoor public settings," Willis told KCBS Radio in an interview on Friday.
Masks are still required for everyone in Marin County, regardless of vaccination status, on public transit, as well as in K-12 schools, hospitals, long-term care facilities and homeless shelters.
Willis said the county still recommends everyone wear face coverings while indoors in public, but Marin is "shifting from this being a legal obligation" to "something that people would do voluntarily, out of their understanding it's beneficial."
Friday marked the 21st consecutive day that Marin County had "moderate" COVID-19 transmission, as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of Friday, the county had vaccinated 81.5% of all residents, and Willis deemed hospitalizations low and stable enough to end the mandate.
"We set those criteria so that we knew that the conditions would be in place to safely lift this restriction," Willis told KCBS Radio. "We're peeling back restrictions, slowly, as we return towards normalcy, and this is an important step."
Willis said Friday's decision doesn't mean anyone living in or visiting Marin County should ditch their mask entirely. County officials are going to mainly monitor COVID-19 hospitalizations to see if another mandate is necessary.
San Francisco is the only other Bay Area county currently experiencing "moderate" spread of COVID-19, according to the CDC, meaning it's the only one to average between 10 and 50 new cases per day over the last week.
Per the agency's data as of Thursday, Santa Clara County was the only one with more than 75% of its population fully vaccinated. A jurisdiction can also drop the mask requirement eight weeks after a COVID-19 vaccine has been authorized for emergency use by state and federal authorities, provided the other two established criteria are met.
CDC approval is expected by the end of next week, following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granting an emergency use authorization on Friday.
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