Indoor face masks will continue to be required through mid-February as COVID cases continue to increase in the state of California.
In a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly confirmed the state's decision of the mandate extension for all California residents, regardless of vaccination statuses.
The mandate initially went into full effect last month on December 15, with an expiration date for January 15 of later this month. However, COVID-19 positive cases and hospitalizations have surged immensely through the holiday season throughout California.
Hospitals in California are running into challenging cycles as hospitalizations increase in recent weeks. Scripps hospital is one of those medical centers suffering difficult times at the moment, where they are currently seeing a shortage of staff available to treat patients dealing with COVID-19.
Scripps CEO Chris Van Gorder says they have seen an increase of over 162% in COVID patients since Christmas week. Furthermore, Van Gorder says that hospital staff at Scripps are getting infected at the same rate as the rest of the community.
“We had 43 employees with COVID in October, 49 in November, and 460 in December,” Van Gorder said. “(We’ve had) 370 employees testing positive for COVID since Dec. 27.”
The CEO of the San Diego-based non-profit organization says that just a year ago, they had 500 people hospitalized with the virus, and as of this week, there are up to 210 people being treated. However, up to 15% of the system's employed staff is down at the moment, which results in somewhere around 700 staff members being sick and not working as COVID cases increase in the county.
“This morning, we had five medical-surgical beds available in the entire system,” Van Gorder said Tuesday. “Eight ICU beds and I have 19 patients awaiting beds just in Chula Vista alone, and probably twice that many at Mercy and at La Jolla waiting for beds.”
The state's mask mandate extension decision comes just one day after President Biden addressed the nation with COVID-19 updates, where he warned that the country is experiencing an average of up to 550,000 individual infections per day.
The President urges all Americans to continue to take precaution with mask-wearing on a daily basis, especially for Americans who choose to remain unvaccinated.
