LOS ANGELES (KNX) — Los Angeles County has revised its masking guidance for outdoor events Wednesday, reflecting a drop in the number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 both locally and nationwide.
The new guidance will allow people to be without face masks outdoors at K-12 school and childcare facilities, as well as so-called outside “mega-events,” like shows at the Hollywood Bowl, and professional sports games at Dodger and SoFi stadiums.
Masks continue to be required by the county for those entering indoor spaces, despite that requirement expiring statewide Tuesday night. In other counties in California, face coverings are now only mandated for unvaccinated people in indoor public settings, such as shopping malls, bars, and movie theaters.
L.A. County will keep its mask mandate for vaccinated people in indoor public spaces, but has a plan in place for relaxing requirements as it hits certain hospitalization and case benchmarks.
But that is still “weeks” away, L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said last week.
“We should not be lifting a masking mandate when we’re reporting thousands and thousands of new cases every day,” Ferrer told county supervisors last week. “That doesn’t make sense to us.”
Ferrer said the county planned to lift indoor masking rules once it hit “moderate transmission” status — which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control defines as a region averaging less than 50 cases per 100,000 residents over seven days.
Though the daily case rate for Monday was 46 per 100,000 residents as of Monday, according to county data, cases were as high as 95 per 100,000 as recently as Feb. 8.
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