Marin County Public Health (MCPH) is providing a new roadmap to inform future COVID-19 mitigation strategies in response to Marin’s high vaccination rate and recent questions about a potential mask mandate. Health officials will focus on COVID-19 hospitalization rates rather than daily case rates as a guide for pandemic response policies and orders.
Historically, daily case rates of COVID-19 infections have been the primary measure to determine progress and guide policy decisions. While daily case rates will continue to be measured closely, with 85% of the population fully vaccinated, fewer cases are leading to hospitalization or death.
In October and November 2020, before the arrival of the vaccine, about 1 in 40 newly diagnosed cases led to hospitalization. Today, that number is closer to 1 in 80.
“We’re seeing firsthand how vaccines and boosters are protecting us against severe illness,” says Matt Willis, M.D., Marin County Public Health Officer. “When we consider more restrictive policies, it’s a good time to step back and remember our pandemic goals as a community. We’re trying to prevent hospitalizations and death.”
The new hospitalization-focused metric is already guiding new criteria in Marin. The criteria for potentially reimposing a local mask mandate will be five COVID-19 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents. Locally, that translates to 13 people in the hospital for COVID-19. For context, at the height of a typical flu season in Marin, up to 20 individuals are in the hospital with influenza on any given day.
Marin’s local mask mandate was lifted Nov. 2 after meeting criteria established across the Bay Area that took into account local case rates, hospitalizations, and vaccination rates. Marin case rates declined through November after lifting the mandate, which health officials credit to ongoing vaccination uptake and residents’ adherence to face-covering recommendations.
A survey conducted in late November of Marin grocery stores found between 80% and 90% of individuals continued to wear masks indoors. Marin County Public Health strongly recommends the use of face-covering for all residents in indoor public settings and reminds residents that existing state mask mandates remain in place, requiring all people to wear masks in school, public transit, and health care settings.
Public health officials also point to the increased use of home-based testing as a reason for looking to hospitalizations to determine local COVID-19 burden. Home-based tests are generally not reported to health departments, preventing officials from seeing a true picture of cases in the community.
The County will continue to measure case rates daily as a critical and publicly report them on its Data and Surveillance webpage. Residents are asked to report results of home-based testing to Marin County Public Health on its Self-Test Reporting webpage.
Vaccinations remain the best line of defense against COVID-19 and its variants. Visit GetVaccinatedMarin.org for information about COVID-19 vaccines and to find an available vaccination appointment.
