L.A. County’s Public Health Chief Discusses the Mask Mandate

Full interview: Good morning.

Last week, exactly a month after Californians exalted in the state’s grand reopening, Los Angeles County officials announced that masks would be required, once again, in indoor public settings.

The move, which came in response to the explosive spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, was an emotional setback for Angelenos, who lived with stringent pandemic restrictions for more than a year.

Case rates have been climbing at an alarming pace, and there are millions of Los Angeles County residents who have yet to be vaccinated.

I spoke with Barbara Ferrer, the county’s public health director, about what’s ahead and why her office decided to return to mandatory indoor masking. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited and condensed.

First, Dr. Ferrer, can you explain why it was necessary to put in place the mandate rather than continuing with mask guidance? You told my colleague a couple of weeks ago that you didn’t intend to “return to lockdown or more disruptive mandates.” What changed?

I guess I would start by saying we don’t consider wearing masks a disruptive mandate at all. Some people might be inconvenienced by it, but it doesn’t disrupt customary business processes.

We were hopeful that more people would mask indoors with the recommendation. With the Delta variant, the situation has changed. I don’t think we’d see a surge in cases without the Delta variant.

All along, this department has been very clear we’re recommending masking indoors because of what we’ve been seeing in other countries with this variant.

Now that we know more, it’s time to mandate masks indoors. This is in line with how we’ve been approaching mitigating the devastating effects of this virus with the evidence at hand.

We had more than 2,500 new cases today. Test positivity is 5.2 percent. All of these numbers reflect behaviors and actions people took two weeks ago.

We were just urging people to wear masks indoors to avoid these big surges. But it will take us another couple of weeks at least to start seeing the benefits.

What are you looking for in terms of being in a place where it’s safe to lift the mandate, if not the masking guidance? How long do you think that will take?

It’s a great question. We made the decision when community transmission moved from a moderate level to a substantial level of transmission. We’re about to move to widespread transmission.

We’d like to get back to a more moderate threshold of community transmission, at which point we’ll be comfortable.

It will indicate that a lot of people adhered to the masking mandate. But getting more people vaccinated is still the most effective way of reducing transmission. So it will take both.

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