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Noting that active COVID-19 cases appear to be on a downward trend locally, Del Norte’s public health officer says he will honor the state’s expiration date regarding indoor masking.

California is set to end its statewide mask mandate on Feb. 15 and lift negative test requirements to visit hospitals and nursing homes, the Associated Press reported Monday.

On Tuesday, Del Norte County Public Health Officer Dr. Aaron Stutz said he will rescind the mask order he put out just before the holiday season. Indoor mask mandates will still remain for healthcare workers and in K12 schools, Stutz said.

This announcement before the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors comes as the number of active cases in the county, fueled by the omicron variant, peaked about two weeks ago, according to Stutz.

“From Jan. 24-30, we had 400 new cases and that was followed by a 25 percent decrease in cases for last week — the week of Jan. 31-Feb. 6, we had a total of 257 new cases,” he told county supervisors. “That’s a really good sign that this omicron surge has peaked and is on its way down.”

According to Stutz, the two COVID-19 fatalities the Public Health Branch reported last week were individuals in their 80s. There are currently five people at Sutter Coast Hospital with coronavirus symptoms, including one in the intensive care unit, he said.

Of those five hospitalized patients, two are unvaccinated, Stutz said, while three had received their last dose about a year ago.

“Just because you’ve been vaccinated or just because you had COVID a year ago that doesn’t really mean anything at this late stage of the game,” he said, adding that annual coronavirus boosters will become the norm. “This immunity is not necessarily long lived. The virus is going to mutate; you’re going to need a booster dose.”

Stutz also found himself defending mask mandates, particularly in children, both to county supervisors and to the public.

District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard, whose wife Lisa Howard is a faculty member with Del Norte Unified School District, said he couldn’t find scientific evidence showing that wearing a mask prevents COVID transmission among youth.

Noting that the pandemic has been a serious detriment to the learning and social-emotional wellbeing of Del Norte County’s youth, Howard said that having the mask mandate dropped for most segments of society, but not schools is “disproportionately impacting our youth.”

“This is a population, which is 99.9 percent not going to come down with something that’s going to be debilitating or going to kill them,” Howard said. “Not to weigh on the fears of the public, when are we going to change this dynamic? Because it does not seem to be ending, especially for our youth getting back to some kind of normalcy.”

Stutz said there is scientific evidence that facial coverings protect against COVID transmission, pointing out that health officials “wouldn’t be harping on it if it wasn’t effective.” While he agreed that children’s education has suffered as a result of the pandemic, wearing a mask hasn’t harmed them, Stutz said.

He also pointed out that while children aren’t likely to develop serious illness from COVID, they may transmit the virus to an elderly loved one who is susceptible to the disease.

“We’re trying to protect their families from COVID, that was the intention,” Stutz said.

During public comment, county resident Linda Sutter brought up a Scott Valley Unified School District decision in October asserting its flexibility as granted by the state when it comes to upholding universal mask mandates.

Scott Valley Unified School District is in Siskiyou County, where Stutz is also a public health officer.

Stutz responded saying that Scott Valley Unified chose not to follow the state’s mask mandate because it was becoming difficult for their schools to create a constructive learning environment. Many parents, disagreeing with the mask order, were refusing to put face coverings on their kids and were asking their children to refuse to wear them if asked by a school staff member, Stutz said. Parents also refused to pick their child up from school if when staff called them, he said.

“They were basically dumping their children at school without a mask and refusing to pick them up,” Stutz said. “It was creating a huge amount of chaos during the school system because it was something like 80 percent of the students or more. They chose to, despite my advice, chose to not enforce facial coverings ordered at that time.”

According to Stutz, the Scott Valley school district’s decision opens it up for legal action through CalOSHA if a teacher becomes sick at school because the state’s guidelines were not being followed.

When asked about how he determines whether a COVID-positive patient had died of the disease even though they may have been a smoker or a terminal cancer patient, Stutz acknowledged that those conditions put someone at much greater risk of dying from the coronavirus.

The question is would that patient have lived if he or she didn’t have COVID, Stutz said.

“In the documentation or in my case experience with that patient, if it looks like the patient would have lived a lot longer if they hadn’t had COVID, I would say the death was COVID-related,” he said.

However, if a person came to the hospital for a heart attack, but were otherwise well and turned up COVID-positive and died, Stutz said he would question whether that death were COVID-related.

“If I don’t see any corroborating evidence, I’m not likely to call it a COVID death,” he said. “That’s happened a number of times in Siskiyou and Del Norte County.”

According to the Del Norte Public Health Branch, 62 new cases were reported over the weekend, making for a total of 276 active cases in Del Norte County.

Forty-three people have died of COVID since the pandemic began in March 2020.

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