Los Angeles County to impose mask mandate for outdoor events

Los Angeles County will become the next location in the United States to begin reimposing covid-19 restrictions. As of 11:59 pm on August 18th, Los Angeles county will require any major outdoor event to make mask-wearing mandatory regardless of vaccination status. This will affect any festival, sporting event or concert that hosts over 10,000 attendees.

Just after fully reopening in June, California has seen two reintroductions of restrictions happen. Back in July Los Angeles reinstated the mask mandate for all indoor events. This doesn’t come as a surprise due to the high spike in covid-19 cases across the county due to the Delta variant with L.A. County Public Health reporting 2,426 new cases as of earlier this week.

According to Variety, the county stated that “the order is to be enforced by the operators of any such event both verbally and with visible signage at all entry points.” They also state that the order does acknowledge that “actively eating or drinking” will be a reason to remove masks but must be put back on after finishing.

“The most sensible way to add protection is to please keep you rmask on when in indoor public places or worksites and at outdoor mega events when not eating or drinking.” – Barbara Ferrer, PhD, MPH, MEd, Director of Public Health

 

Image Credit: Drew Ressler/rukes.com