Citing the ongoing rise in COVID-19, UC Irvine has shifted back to an indoor mask mandate as of Monday, July 18. The university took steps to notify students via social media, adding that the mandate applied to anyone inside campus buildings, regardless of vaccination status. 

In terms of reasoning behind reinstating the indoor mask mandate, UCI referenced the aspect of “high community transmission” as defined by the CDC. In the high transmission category, there are more than 200 new cases in seven days, within a population of 100,000.

“The upward trend of COVID-19 cases in our region has caused Orange County to move into the ‘high community transmission’ level per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. The CDC recommends masking indoors for regions with high community transmission,” according to the statement. 

Locally, between Tuesday, July 12 and Thursday, July 15, the Orange County Health Agency reported 277 people hospitalized, with 35 cases in the county’s intensive care unit. To date, Orange County has reported 620,698 COVID-19 cases, with 7,170 deaths. 

Outside of Orange County, mask mandates were rumored to be returning neighboring Los Angeles County, with Barbara Ferrer, the Los Angeles County Director of Public Health, saying COVID-19 puts people at risk for death, despite no underlying health complications. 

“Every day when I report out who dies, there are people who die who have no underlying health conditions. So no one should not go into a space of saying, ‘I’m not at any risk.’ Because that’s just absolutely not true,” Ferrer said during a press conference on Thursday, July 14. 

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