Los Angeles County will require face masks at major outdoor events

The crowd at Dodgers Stadium this spring.

(Image credit: Harry How/Getty Images)

published 18 August 2021

Starting at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, Los Angeles County will require that people attending large outdoor gatherings, including concerts, sporting events, and festivals, wear a face mask.

"As the highly infectious Delta variant continues to spread, wearing masks — regardless of vaccination status — indoors and in crowded settings, including at outdoor mega events, reduces the risk of being infected with and transmitting COVID-19," the L.A. County Department of Public Health said in a statement Tuesday.

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The Delta variant is highly contagious, and causing breakthrough infections for people who are fully vaccinated. Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health officer for Orange County, California, said last week that COVID is "lingering in the air, so there is still a potential to get COVID when you're outdoors and in close contact or at least in close proximity to others, and you're in social events where people are spitting, singing, coughing, sneezing right in the air that you're breathing."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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