LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Unified School District will keep its outdoor mask mandate in place through the rest of the week, despite county health officials lifting that requirement at K-12 schools effective Wednesday, said Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.
The district will consult with expert advisers and consider later this week whether it would be appropriate to lift the outdoor mask mandate as early as the beginning of next week, Carvalho said during a visit Wednesday morning to Fremont High School in South Los Angeles. He said it was premature to discuss the parameters for lifting the indoor mask mandate.
Carvalho announced the decision in an update posted on Twitter Tuesday night, saying that the district “will keep the current guidelines in place for the remainder of this week and will announce changes to our outdoor masking guidance as early as next week.”
“Los Angeles Unified has remained aligned with our health partners throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” he wrote. “I will continue to coordinate with our medical director, Dr. Smita Malhotra, and Los Angeles County officials as our positivity rates from the Omicron variant decrease.”
While the state requires all K-12 students and staff to wear masks indoors, L.A. County also had — until recently — required wearing them outdoors on campus.
That changed early Wednesday morning, when the county relaxed that requirement outdoors at K-12 schools, including transitional kindergarten, and child-care facilities.
Additionally, masks are no longer required in exterior areas of “mega” events, such as those at the Hollywood Bowl, Dodger Stadium, SoFi Stadium and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
The county loosened its rules after meeting its self-set threshold of having under 2,500 coronavirus-positive individuals hospitalized for seven straight days. As of Tuesday, 1,835 such patients were hospitalized countywide — a decrease of 29% from a week ago.
But while California on Wednesday lifted a statewide mandate that residents wear masks in indoor public places, L.A. County is maintaining that requirement for the time being.
County health officials say they will lift that rule once the region records seven consecutive days at a “moderate” level of coronavirus transmission, as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Though L.A. County remains well above that level at the moment, transmission is plunging — and Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer estimated this week that the county could hit its target by the middle of March.
