Los Angeles County health officials have advised all essential workers to wear masks when they’re inside their own homes because of the recent spike in COVID-19 cases there, CNN reports.
What’s going on?
Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said in a news conference Monday that wearing masks inside “will add a layer of protection while we get through this surge.”
- “Right now, because there is so much spread, we’re recommending that people wear their face coverings while they’re inside the home,” Ferrer said Monday. That’s for people who are either leaving their home every day for work or who are running errands regularly for their family, Ferrer said.
Context:
Los Angeles County has become something of an epicenter for the novel coronavirus in recent weeks. The latest data show that a person is dying of COVID-19 every eight minutes within the county, according to CBS News. More than 932,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the county, too.
Over the weekend, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the rate of COVID-19 deaths in Los Angeles County is equal to the amount of homicides in Los Angeles in an entire year, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.
- “Yesterday we had 259 deaths, that’s one more than all the homicides in 2019 in L.A. city combined,” he said. “In a single day, equal to a year of homicides.”