Masks ‘strongly’ urged indoors

County recommends, does not mandate face coverings



ONCE MORE?—County officials have not yet begun discussing a threshold at which point mask wearing would become required again.

ONCE MORE?—County officials have not yet begun discussing a threshold at which point mask-wearing would become required again.

Ventura County won’t join its neighbor to the south in mandating mask-wearing indoors—at least not yet—but health officials are urging residents to voluntarily don the face coverings when they’re inside public places.

The county’s public health department issued a statement Monday strongly recommending that everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public settings due to rising COVID case numbers.

“We are not talking about any requirements or any lockdowns or anything of that sort,” Public Health Director Rigoberto Vargas told the Ventura County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

“It’s just an urging of people to protect each other, protect loved ones,” Vargas said. “One way to do that is get vaccinated.”

Authorities have not yet begun discussing a threshold at which point mask-wearing would become required again, Vargas told the Acorn this week.

“Our (average daily) case rate, at 4.5 (per 100,000), while not the 1.3 we had a month ago . . . is much better than what we saw during the surge and a lot lower than Los Angeles County at around 10,” Vargas said. “At this point, we’re more in alignment with other counties (than L.A. County).”

Santa Barbara County also issued a statement on Monday urging all residents to wear masks indoors in public but stopped short of a mandate.

While the COVID vaccines help slow transmission, they are not 100% effective, Public Health Officer Dr. Robert Levin said in the county’s statement, explaining why the second layer of protection is needed.

“Ventura County data have recently shown that unvaccinated people are 22 times more likely to become infected and hospitalized than vaccinated residents,” Levin said. “Still, several of our hospitalized people have been vaccinated, and that is several too many.”

As many as 142 county residents who’ve tested positive for the virus since Jan. 1 were fully vaccinated, Vargas said, accounting for 0.03% of the county’s fully vaccinated population.

Of the 41 people hospitalized with COVID as of July 19, four were fully vaccinated.

What is catching some attention is that just over a third of the total breakthrough cases—52 of them—have appeared in about the last month. The breakthrough cases represent 5.1% of the 1,017 cases since June 15, the public health director said.

“That percent is increasing, and we do believe that percent is corresponding to the Delta variant that is more transmissible, so that is a concern to see the increase,” Vargas said, pointing out that around 95% of new cases are in people not vaccinated.

So far, no county residents who have been fully vaccinated have died due to the disease, the public health officer said.

Ventura County’s announcement came as the area hit a seven-day average of 58 new cases, up from an average of 30 new cases at the beginning of July and only 11 new cases a month before.

As of Wednesday, there were 150 newly identified cases since Monday. The county does not currently—but will soon—have testing capability to determine whether an infection is the original or delta variant of the disease, Vargas said.

For now, the county, like most California counties, sends specimens to the state for analysis.

To help explain spread information regarding COVID vaccinations and answer questions, the county has partnered with the Complete Reach Committee, which worked on getting people to complete the census forms.

The county has begun sending people door-to-door and using other means to get the word out, County CEO Mike Powers told the supervisors.