City Votes Not to Enforce COVID-19 Restriction Proposed by Health Department

People demonstrate against COVID-19 vaccine mandates for students in Southern California in a file photo. (Robyn Beck/AFP)

The City Council in Beverly Hills, California, unanimously voted not to enforce a Los Angeles County COVID-19 mask mandate if one is adopted by the county health department.

Los Angeles County is poised to impose a new indoor mask mandate at the end of July, according to Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer in an update on July 21. However, she said that if reported cases see a “steep decline next week,” the county may “take a pause on moving too quickly on indoor masking, universal indoor masking.”

But on Monday, the Beverly Hills City Council voted down the mandate. If Los Angeles County implements the mask mandate, it now means that it will have to dedicate staff and resources to enforce it in Beverly Hills, according to a news release from the city.

Mayor Lili Bosse said in the release Monday that "we are not where we were in 2020, and now we need to move forward as a community and be part of the solution.”

“I feel it is our job to lead and I support the power of choice,” Bosse, who presented the item at the City Council meeting, also said. “Our job is to be proactive and public about what we believe.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the Los Angeles Health Department for comment.

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After it was suggested earlier this month that a mask mandate could be imposed in Los Angeles, top officials at a Southern California hospital system dismissed a recent rise in COVID-19 cases as “media hype.”

Brad Spellberg, the chief medical officer of Los Angeles County and University of Southern California Medical Center, and epidemiologist Paul Holtom, told reporters in mid-July that there have been no changes in the transmission levels of COVID-19.

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, at podium, speaks at a news conference with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (L), in Los Angeles on March 12, 2020. (Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo)

“It’s just the same. It’s not changed. It’s been the same. It’s like ... two months of the same,” Spellberg said.

He added: “Of those who are admitted, they’re 90 percent of the time not admitted due to COVID. Only 10 percent of our COVID-positive admissions are admitted due to COVID. Virtually none of them go to the ICU, and when they do go to the ICU, it is not for pneumonia. They are not intubated.”

On July 14, Ferrer said that the county will likely reimpose the mask rule on July 29, saying that there is “high” transmission for two consecutive weeks, then it will trigger “a universal mandatory indoor mask-wearing mandate.”

Last week, a preprint study published by the University of California–Davis found that mask mandates in schools didn’t have much impact on preventing the spread of COVID-19.

“Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students,” they wrote after evaluating data from two school districts in Fargo, North Dakota, in which one had a mask mandate and the other did not.

“We observed no significant difference between student case rates while the districts had differing masking policies nor while they had the same mask policies,” they said, adding that the “impact of school-based mask mandates on COVID-19 transmission in children is not fully established” amid mask rules around the United States.