Los Angeles County finally lifted its indoor mask mandate on Friday after coronavirus numbers fell through a key threshold.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Los Angeles County lifted its indoor mask order Friday after it officially exited the high coronavirus community level as calculated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC data published Thursday afternoon showed that the county’s coronavirus community level had officially dropped into the “low” category.
Local health authorities waited for the CDC’s update before acting. County health officer Dr. Muntu Davis issued a new health order, effective Friday at 12:01 a.m., that lifted the indoor mask order, regardless of vaccination status, in places such as bars, stores, offices, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters.
The Times noted that individual businesses can still impose their own mandates, and individuals can choose to wear masks if they want to do so.
Though Los Angeles County has also lifted the mask mandate for children in school, effective March 11, the teachers’ union in the City of Los Angeles is refusing to allow masks to be dropped in L.A.’s public school system.
The county removed the mask mandate last summer, before reimposing it as the delta variant of the coronavirus arrived.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti infamously joined Gov. Gavin Newsom in removing their masks at a football game earlier this year, before county regulations allowed them to do so.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.