Orange County’s mask mandate is probably not coming back just yet

“We certainly have seen an increase in cases, but with two+ years into the pandemic, we have more preventive measures to take now that we didn’t have in the past,” [said Dr. Matt Zahn, M.D., Deputy Health Director, Medical Director of Communicable Disease Control Division.] Despite this, the UC Irvine campus instituted the indoor mask rule Monday. “It’s more of the same,” Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist and UC Irvine [associate] professor of population health and disease prevention, told City News Service on Friday. “What struck me is we passed 18% positivity. … We’re in a wave of COVID.”