California to end mask, vaccine mandates for health care workers – San Francisco Chronicle
California will drop COVID-19 mask and vaccination mandates for health care settings next month, according to updated guidance released Friday by the state’s health department.
Beginning April 3, health care workers, patients and visitors will no longer be required to wear a mask or be vaccinated to work in facilities that include hospitals, urgent care centers and dental and doctors’ offices. The new rules also apply to correctional facilities as well as homeless, emergency and warming and cooling centers, said the California Department of Public Health.
Officials decided to keep the current rules in place until that date to give health care facilities and local public health agencies time to prepare for the change and adjust safety policies. Some settings may continue requiring masks even after the statewide requirements are lifted.
Washington and Oregon state health officials made the same announcement Friday, moving to lift the last major requirements meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
“Our communities did a lot of the hard work by getting vaccinated and boosted, staying home and testing when sick, requesting treatments when positive, and masking to slow the spread,” said Dr. Tomás Aragón, the state’s health officer, in a statement. “With these critical actions and a lot of patience and persistence, we have now reached a point where we can update some of the COVID-19 guidance to continue to balance prevention and adapting to living with COVID-19.”
California lifted its sweeping COVID-19 state of emergency on Tuesday — nearly three years to the day after it was put in place by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The updated guidance includes other changes. Beginning March 13, people who test positive for COVID-19 may end isolation after five days “if they feel well, have improving symptoms, and are fever-free for 24 hours, with less emphasis on testing negative.”
On April 3, the state will rescind an order that required hospitals statewide to accept transfer patients from facilities with limited ICU capacity as needed.
That date will also mark the end of Californians being able to access vaccines anonymously. The new rules state that vaccine providers must ask patients for their email addresses and/or mobile phone numbers before administering a COVID-19 vaccine.
Along with these changes, CDPH has started winding down many of its “underutilized” pandemic supports, including local contact tracing efforts, staffing flexibilities for hospitals and nursing homes, training and certification programs for home health aides, as well as expedited license processing for facilities performing COVID-19 tests.
Dr. Deepa Rathi puts on a mask while gearing up in full PPE to tend to a COVID-19 patient in the Intensive Care Unit at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose on July 31, 2020.
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle
California tallied another 237 confirmed COVID-19 deaths this week, bringing the statewide pandemic toll to 100,424 as of Thursday, with an average of 18 people dying each day due to the virus.
California’s state health department reported an average of 2,760 new daily cases — or about 6.9 per 100,000 residents — as of Thursday, compared to 2,859 cases per day, or 7.1 per 100,000 residents in the prior week. The state’s seven-day rolling coronavirus test positivity rate, which tracks the percentage of lab test results that are positive for the virus, remains unchanged at 6.5%.
The state’s wastewater facilities show levels of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material plateauing in most regions. The daily average of COVID patients in California hospitals now numbers 2,506, compared to 2,607 last week. Nearly 4% of the state’s inpatient beds are now in use for COVID-19 patients, up from 2.61% over the same period.
“We stand before Californians today with a humble message of thanks for taking the hard steps to help manage COVID-19, and with an ongoing commitment to be prepared for what comes next,” Aragón said.
Reach Aidin Vaziri: avaziri@sfchronicle.com
