Indoor Mask Mandate: A city official clarified Tuesday morning that Pasadena will not immediately lift its indoor mask mandate for unvaccinated people Tuesday as earlier reports had indicated.
City spokesperson Lisa Derderian said Pasadena will join Los Angeles County in continuing to impose the indoor mask requirement for the time being, despite the state lifting the requirement as of Tuesday.
Local health departments have the ability to maintain stricter requirements that state minimum standards.
Masks continue to be required for everyone at certain indoor settings including health care facilities, transit centers, airports, aboard public transit, in correctional facilities and at homeless shelters and long-term care facilities.
The Pasadena Public Health Department said Tuesday it will no longer require face coverings in Pasadena K-12 schools and childcare sites as of March 12. The move will come in alignment with the State of California’s relaxation of the indoor school masking mandate, set to go into effect at midnight on March 11.
School districts and campuses may choose to continue to require masking at schools and during school activities and were encouraged by the PPHD to consult with teachers, staff, parents and students as they consider the appropriate safety protections for their school community, the city said in a statement.
The county recently eased its requirement, allowing vaccinated people to remove their masks in indoor locations where all patrons are checked for either a COVID vaccination or a recent negative test.
There has been a growing push by two county supervisors for an end to the county’s mask-wearing mandate. Supervisors Barger and Janice Hahn have both said the county should align its rules fully with the state to avoid confusion and frustration among residents.
Barger on Monday hailed the state’s announcement that it is easing masking rules, and again called for an end to the county requirement.
On Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new standards that rely largely on COVID hospital numbers to govern whether masks should be worn. Those new standards — while resulting in mask recommendations being lifted for much of the country, still classified Los Angeles and San Diego counties as having “high” virus activity and urged that people continue to wear masks.
Under the new CDC guidance, both Orange and Riverside counties are in the “medium” category, so the federal guidance does not require mask-wearing.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer has said that the county’s indoor mask-wearing rule would remain in place until: the county’s level of COVID transmission rate falls to the “moderate” level as defined by the CDC and remains there for two weeks; OR COVID vaccines have been available to residents under age 5 for at least eight weeks; AND no emerging COVID “variants of concern” have been identified that could spark another surge in cases.
According to Ferrer, reaching the CDC’s “moderate” level of transmission requires the county to have a seven-day cumulative infection rate of less than 50 per 100,000 residents. Ferrer said that is expected to happen by March 16, meaning the indoor mask mandate would be completely lifted by March 30.
Los Angeles County lifted its outdoor mask mandate for large event venues, schools and child care centers on Feb. 16.
In Pasadena Unified School District masking is required for all outdoor activities where physical distancing is not feasible, except while eating or drinking. It is strongly recommended but not required that students wear upgraded masks which at a minimum are well-fitting, non-cloth mask of multiple layers of non-woven material with a nose wire. Nothing in this protocol requires that the school provide upgraded masks to its general student population and parental preference should be respected as to the level of PPE the student wears. However, universal masking with some appropriate type of face covering is still currently required for both indoor and outdoor settings on the school campus and on school buses. Here is the PUSD mask requirement flyer:
Once the mask mandate is lifted for indoor activities for schools, private, independent schools are free to adopt their own rules for students and staff.
Cases: The number of COVID-positive patients in Los Angeles County hospitals has fallen again, dropping from 792 to 755, according to the latest state figures out on Sunday, March 6.
Of those patients, 131 were in intensive care, up three from the previous day.
On Saturday, local health officials reported 1,382 new cases of COVID-19 and 48 additional deaths associated with the virus, bringing the county’s totals to 2,803,476 cases and 31,005 fatalities since the pandemic began. The rolling average daily rate of people testing for the virus was 1%, down from 1.1% on Friday, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
The department no longer updates COVID data on Sundays.
Almost two years after the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for 100,000 contact tracers to contain the coronavirus, the C.D.C. said this week that it no longer recommends universal case investigation and contact tracing. Instead it encourages health departments to focus those practices on high-risk settings.
The turning point comes as the national outlook continues to improve rapidly, with new cases, hospitalizations and deaths all continuing to fall even as the path out of the pandemic remains complicated. It also reflects the reality that contact-tracing programs in about half of U.S. states have been eliminated.
Britain ended contact tracing last week, while Denmark and Finland are among other nations that have scaled back the use of contact tracers. New York City announced on Tuesday that it was ending its main contact-tracing program in late April and moving toward treating the coronavirus as another manageable virus.
The Economy: Oil prices soared and stocks fell on Wall Street Tuesday as investors shifted more money into ultra-safe U.S. government bonds in response to Russia’s escalating war on Ukraine. Another day of volatile trading left stocks broadly lower as investors tried to measure how the conflict will impact the global economy. The S& P 500 index fell 1.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.8% and the Nasdaq composite slid 1.6%. The declines add to the market’s losses after a two-month skid for the S& P 500.
The bigger moves came from the markets for oil, agricultural commodities and government bonds. Oil has been a key concern because Russia is one of the world’s largest energy producers. The latest bump in prices increases pressure on persistently high inflation that threatens households around the world.
U.S. benchmark crude oil jumped 8% to $103.41 per barrel. That’s the biggest single-day jump since May 2020 and the highest price since 2014. Brent crude, the international standard, surged 7.1% to $104.97.
The crisis in Ukraine prompted an extraordinary meeting of the International Energy Agency’s board, which resulted in all 31 member countries agreeing to release 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also has put more pressure on agricultural commodity prices, which were also already getting pushed higher with rising inflation. Wheat and corn prices rose more than 5% per bushel and are already up more than 20% so far this year. Ukraine is a key exporter of both crops.
US jobs growth accelerated sharply last month, bolstering the Federal Reserve’s case to push ahead with a series of interest rate increases this year. Employers in the world’s largest economy added 678,000 jobs in February, eclipsing economists’ expectations.