Mask mandates will be returning to several counties in California’s San Francisco Bay Area starting next month.
The orders, which were handed down by individual counties, apply mainly to health care workers, although at least two Bay Area counties have extended the requirement to visitors and patients.
A similar mandate was handed down broadly across the Bay Area for the 2023–2024 fall-through-spring period.
Health officials in counties who have issued upcoming mask mandates say that the face coverings are designed to reduce the spread of COVID-19, influenza, and other respiratory viruses, harking back to the COVID-19 pandemic when mandates were widespread across much of the United States….