Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer says she is "not focused" on bringing back mask mandates for the most populous county in the country, even as COVID-19 cases see an uptick.
Ferrer told the Los Angeles Times in an interview that if the outbreak of coronavirus returned to levels where she believes a mandate would be warranted, most people would already be voluntarily wearing masks again.
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“I’m really not focused on masks coming back as a mandate,” she said. “If we ever felt like we needed to return to everybody needing to put their mask back on again, I think we would be in bad shape and most people would want to put their mask on. We have such good tools right now that we really shouldn’t get there."
Businesses and local governments across the country have started reconsidering mask mandates as cases begin to rise. Mask mandates nationwide have largely gone away since a court struck down the federal transportation mask mandate in April 2022.
Los Angeles County last had a mask mandate in place through March 2022 and reportedly flirted with reimplementing the mask mandate in December 2022 but ultimately did not. The state of California itself has not had a mask mandate in place since February 2022.
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Data behind mask effectiveness in preventing the spread of COVID-19 has not been clear, with a meta-analysis study published earlier this year showing that N95 masks and other respirators "probably [made] little to no difference" in catching or transmitting flu, COVID-19, or other respiratory illnesses.
Discussion of the reimplementation of mask mandates has caused the issue to become a rallying cry for Republican politicians who have vowed to stop any future mask mandates or COVID-19 lockdowns. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), widely known for his COVID-19 response in the Sunshine State, reaffirmed his commitment to not allowing mask mandates earlier this week.