Will California backtrack on masks, reopenings as Delta variant sparks new COVID fears?

Will California backtrack on masks, reopenings as Delta variant sparks new COVID fears?

It will be hard to “throw down a big public-health order one month after lifting it,” said Andrew Noymer, an infectious disease expert [and associate professor of population health and disease prevention] at UC Irvine. Newsom could direct Californians to wear masks again, but “I worry that people will disobey the order,” he said. Despite the highly contagious nature of the Delta variant, “the vaccines we have still work against Delta,” Noymer said. It isn’t until a variant emerges that resists the vaccines that we’ll “need to go full-blown back to whatever,” he said.