Vaccinated citizens will no longer be required to wear masks indoors.

Yesterday, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the local government will allow the current indoor mask mandate to expire next week on February 15. Once the mandate expires, adult Californians who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer be required to wear a face mask indoors, though children will still need to wear masks in schools. Unvaccinated adults will also still be advised to wear face masks indoors.

California is set to end a universal indoor mask mandate next week and roll back other restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus, officials announced on Monday.https://t.co/DQ19AWPX2L

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 8, 2022

The current indoor mask mandate was imposed back in December on the heels of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Case rates reached their peak last month, and since then have dropped by 65%. According to the most recently-released data, the vast majority of new COVID infections and hospitalizations have been in unvaccinated individuals.

Citing a 65% drop in Covid-19 cases since the peak of the Omicron surge, California will end its statewide indoor mask mandate for vaccinated individuals next week, nearly two years after it was first implemented, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced https://t.co/llqwfWfQ96

— CNN (@CNN) February 8, 2022

According to CDC statistics, approximately 69.4% of the adult Californian population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with the rate of new COVID cases among those individuals being only 9 in one million. For unvaccinated individuals, case rates are estimated at 117 people in one million.

While the mask mandate is expiring, Newsom stressed in his announcement that it is in all Californians’ best interested to be fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19.