Masks will no longer be required indoors in most places across San Jose after the City Council unanimously voted Tuesday to align with the state's masking guidelines.
While the state and Santa Clara County lifted indoor mask requirements in mid-February and early March, San Jose had continued to require them in public places like grocery stores and restaurants.
The repeal of the city's mask mandate will take effect immediately as an urgency ordinance.
City officials said in a memo recommending repealing the mask requirement that keeping it in place has led to "public confusion" about masking policies and that the requirement is no longer necessary since COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have fallen precipitously in the year's first quarter.
“With the recent transition by the Santa Clara County health officer from a mandate to a strong recommendation to wear face covering indoors, it makes sense to repeal our ordinance to align with the county and state and federal and minimize any confusion with the public,” said Dolan Beckel, the director of the city's Office of Civic Innovation.
Under the state's guidance, wearing a mask indoors is recommended but not required in public places where people from different households frequently mix and interact, including schools.
Masks will still be required regardless of vaccination status under state and federal rules in health care facilities, homeless shelters, prisons, long-term care facilities and on public transit.
The County of Santa Clara stinks of incompetence and poor decision making.
Embarrassing.
Months after even the most oppressive and ineffective mandates were lifted, the inept San Jose leadership finally decides to take action?
CA is cursed with the dumbest people, rising to the highest levels in bureaucracy –
it is a wonder that Silicon Valley even exists to fund their foolish waste of taxpayer dollars.
November needs to be a time to Clean House of all entrenched career elected officials.
What were they waiting for – the Fantasy of ‘Zero Covid’?
For the last several weeks – we have been as close to ‘zero covid’ as ever.
The Rational Facts are that in CA Hospitals (as of Feb 25th):
ICU Bed Utilization w/Covid is ……………… 3%
Inpatient Bed Utilization w/Covid is . .……. 2%
Percent Inpatients with Covid is .…………. 3%
Number of COVID patients in US hospitals reaches record low (AP, April, 2022)
COVID-19 hospitalization numbers have plunged to their lowest levels since the early days of the pandemic, offering a much needed break to health care workers and patients alike following the omicron surge.
The number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus has fallen more than 90% in more than 2 months, and some hospitals are going days without a single COVID-19 patient in the ICU for the first time since early 2020.
Everyone was ignoring the County, so instead of acknowledging the fecklessness, they’ve decided to brush it off.
This should read,
The Rational Facts are that in CA Hospitals (as of April 5th, down 80% since Feb 25th):
ICU Bed Utilization w/Covid is ……………… 3%
Inpatient Bed Utilization w/Covid is . .……. 2%
Percent Inpatients with Covid is .…………. 3%
Steven about to write a 5,000 word essay on COVID doom.
@TTBH, Probably sampling the waste water as you post.
Still Wrong.
No one serious is talking cases anymore, which are mild & meaningless.
The Omicron hospitalization peak was Jan 23rd – 30th.
Current CA Hospitalizations / ICU patient beds testing Covid pos (not necessarily for covid)
are DOWN 92%.
CA hospitalizations are down to their lowest levels – the same as
widely reported by the AP and many other news sources.
Please PROVE you are SANE?
Still Wrong.
No one serious is talking cases anymore, which are mild & mostly meaningless.
The Omicron hospitalization peak was Jan 23rd – 30th.
Current CA Hospitalizations / ICU patient beds testing Covid pos (not necessarily for covid)
are DOWN 92%.
CA hospitalizations are down to their lowest levels – the same as
widely reported by the AP and many other news sources.
Please PROVE you are SANE?
Steve again unless you can show deaths have dramatically increased — last time I checked we were at like six per week — I don’t think removing the mask mandate is unreasonable.
People can get covid in their body but if vaccinated and boosted it will be killed off quickly. I don’t expect infections to ever be zero but as long as the death rate remains low I think we are reasonably safe.
Remeber we’re like 85% vaccinated in Santa clara county and the vaccine is 95+ percent effective.
Ca patriot — you still need to get vaccinated bro. Real men protect others and getting vaccinated protects yourself and others.
Nope.
Definitely still not helping the case to PROVE that you are SANE.
@CA Patriot – you were right. Obsessed about poopy water.
My kid’s middle school made mask-wearing optional. The kids there sit real close together, each looking at their phone screens and showing each other their screens. My kid caught it, then a few days later, I tested positive with symptoms, and a few days after that, so did my wife. Our stance now is that 1) masks work, and 2) the mandate was lifted too soon. We’re all fully vaxxed and boosted.
This really sucks because now I have that virus in me, or remnants of it, and who knows, there might be some kind of shingles-like thing, where years later, some crazy ass new thing erupts from the ashes of today’s coronavirus.
And here you go, trying to be rational and logical when responding to two qanon trump voters. Might as well try to teach linear algebra to a goldfish. These two numbnuts have poo for brains.
Relax, LJW – there are products you can use to remove the remaining residue left on your car from that Biden-Harris sticker.
It seems you have company as a majority of embarrassed Californians are pulling those Biden stickers off faster than soaring Biden-flation food & gas prices.
“Biden Approval Rating Plummets in Deep-Blue State He Won by 29 Points” (Mar2022)
“In an ominous sign of things to come for Dems, Joe Biden’s approval rating is 5 points underwater in deep-blue CA, a state the president won by 29 points in 2020.”
“According to a Public Policy Institute of California poll,
just 46% of likely CA voters approve of Biden, while 51% Disapprove.”
Those numbers mark a 19-point skid in just one year…
Biden’s freefall in CA is likely to prompt serious concern for Democrats…
You’ll suffer more from the remnants of the Vax than you will the Vid.
Natural Immunity. He was for it before he was against it.
Anyone who believes what they say in an media, any county health report, anywhere where data can be massaged, biased toward the message the sender wants or down right lied about is a total idiot. I tracked the numbers given out by SCC in 2020 and multiple times they did not add up correctly. You’d think they could have at least made them “look right”. But as the bad guy in “Under Siege” said to his terrorist boss when he never actually saw Steven Seagal dead…..”Did you see the body”. Did you, who spouts all the above stats……”see the body(ies)”? If you believe ALL they say, congratulations, you must also think Oswald was the lone shooter and were not lied to since then either.
It’s great how everyone who doesn’t want to wear a mask and social distance for the rest of their lives is all of a sudden a fanatic trump supporting redneck.
As if they’re so much smarter and more educated because they want indefinite mandates. Whatever makes them feel better about being scared of their shadow I guess.